


The Queen Who Passed Beyond The Shadow

by AprilFeldspar



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst, BAMF Daenerys Targaryen, BAMF Jon Snow, Blood and Gore, Book Elements, Daenerys Targaryen Lives, Dany rebuilds Valyria, Dark Daenerys Targaryen, Dark Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Disturbing Themes, Eventual Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, F/M, Fix-It, Gen, Justice for Elia Martell, Magic, Minor Gendrya, Nothing worse than you'd see in canon, POV Arya Stark, POV Daenerys, POV Jon Snow, Post-Canon, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Queen Daenerys, Slow Build, Slow Burn, The War for the Dawn, Wargs (ASoIaF), Wildlings - Freeform, dany centric, world building
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-28
Updated: 2020-02-27
Packaged: 2020-05-28 05:49:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 66,528
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19387786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AprilFeldspar/pseuds/AprilFeldspar
Summary: In which Dany passes by the literal Shadow in order to touch the light, builds a great empire and prepares to live up to her role as an incarnation of Azor Ahai. Meanwhile in the North Jon is overwhelmed with sorrow and the true extent of the threat to the living. After all, it could not be so easy as to end with just one battle at Winterfell, could it?





	1. Chapter 1

_What's past is prologue._  
William Shakespeare, _The Tempest_

The first time Arya saw dragons again was above the Isle of Naath and by that time they were among the least surprising things she had encountered. After she had left Westeros, she had sailed west and for many moons or maybe longer she had found nothing but water. She had begun to fear she had come all this way to die of hunger when their provisions inevitably ran out but then the climate started to change and grew warmer. It wasn’t long before they saw land: sandy, golden beaches like she had never seen before, and lush greenery.

Her and her crew’s joy at finally seeing land dimmed when they saw what poured out of the jungles and marshes around them. At first, Arya had thought they were dragons but they weren’t breathing fire. What they did, however, was eat people. Wyverns, she realized, and they fled as fast as they could. But the beasts chased after their ship for a long while as she sailed the strange coastline.

With the specter of famine hanging over their head, they had found themselves having to dock time and time again looking for food. What they found instead was cannibals and ghouls and horrific diseases. Once or twice they came across people that looked like men but were not men with hard brown skin marred with white. They, at least, had seemed peaceful, and though nobody aboard Arya’s ship could understand their throaty growls that barely resembled a language, they had managed to trade some of the trinkets they had on board for fruit and salted meats.

By the time they reached a river’s delta bigger than Arya could have thought possible, they were short on food again. They discovered nobody living in the watery region but a few of her men that had made the mistake of venturing into the river had died screaming in a matter of minutes. There was something in the water that could eat a man whole. But hunger was a cruel taskmaster. So they went exploring up the river in search for something they could eat but not knowing if they could trust the fruit hanging in the trees. It looked like nothing any of them had ever seen before and without the council of anyone native to those lands they didn’t dare touch it let alone sample it.

The jungle stopped abruptly around a city of ruins made out of an oily black stone that resembled that Arya recognized in an instant. Yeen, she realized, recalling what she had read of the voyages of Nymeria, the warrior princess of Rhoynar, her childhood hero. If they lingered, they would never return. Nothing grew around the strange black stone and nobody came back from the cities built of it by people that had long since faded from history. She gave the order to turn back a moment too late. Giant apes came after them, killing men with one blow. The screams resounded them long after they ran away from the cursed city.

The good news was that if this was Yeen then the Isle of Toads of couldn’t be far. Arya knew where they were now: on the treacherous coast of the third continent of their world, Sothoryos. They had somehow managed to bypass the fourth and most mysterious continent of Uthos and ended up there. Beyond Sothoryos lay Essos and farther west, Westeros. Their world was round.

The bad news about knowing where they were was that the Isle of Toads was part of the Basilisk Isles that were infested with pirates. The could naturally sail along the coastline and avoid the dangerous islands but that would lead right to another Sothoryos peninsula that was famed for being one of the last places to be full of basilisks. An older Braavosi sailor Arya had taken with her advised that they went to the Isle of Toads, after all, to try and trade for some food. The natives there were known to be strange and inhuman but not hostile. Then they could try and sneak their way along the coast avoiding both pirates and the basilisks. With a little luck they could bypass Naath with its dreaded butterfly fever and go straight for the Summer Isles.

Arya found that piece of advice sound and soon they found themselves on the Isle of Toads. As expected, the inhabitants had fish like faces and webbed hands and feet but they were willing to trade food for some of the gold Arya still had on board. She saw the fabled Toad Stone, the 40 foot statue carved out of the same black stone she had seen in the ruins of Yeen and. Despite everything she had been through so far, she couldn’t help the cold shiver licking its way up her spine. It wasn’t the statue itself. Toads weren’t frightening in and out of themselves. But the stone gleamed as if oiled in the bright sunlight and looked so alien and cold and terrible.

Sothoryos and the Isle of Toads showed no signs that winter had come other than the short days followed by quick sunsets and pitch black nights. It had been chilly at night but not freezing. The locals of the Isle of Toads spoke of winter just like they did in Westeros and the same tremor of fear could be heard in their screechy voices. She was beginning to comprehend that winter meant something else around here where the weather was far warmer than on Westeros. Winter meant night and darkness and that was something no living being enjoyed. Artya wondered with a pang how long she had been at sea. The coast of Sothoryos had been long and they had been sailing for many moons even before they reached it. Had she been gone for two years? Three? More? And how much longer until the winter would be over? She puzzled how Sansa and the others were doing up North where everything froze over in winter, and if she would ever seen them again.

The natives of the Isle of Toads also told them something her sailors found to be unbelievable: there were no more pirates in the Basilisk Isles. Dragons had burnt them all off a while back. Arya failed to suppress another shiver at the mentioning of dragons and the memories they invoked. People were beginning to come and settle the old pirate strongholds and building cities under the protection of someone called the Shadow or the Sorceress Queen. The notion made Arya uncomfortable, which coupled with her crew’s disbelief, determined her not to risk trying to go around the isles and sail close to Sothoryos towards Naath.

Strong winds pushed them into the Basilisk Point, which, they discovered, had earned its name. Arya didn’t make the error of docking but they could see the monsters on the shore, far larger than the books described but every bit as terrifying. Relief washed over the ship as they moved into the foamy waters that took them away from Sothoryos.

Arya was in the process of making notes on theBasilisk Point, when she heard it. The cry of a dragon was unlike anything man or beast could produce. It was sharp and terrible but also melodious like a song erupting from another world. She ran out of her cabin and onto the deck. With their heads tipped back, all her sailors were gazing into the cloudless sky. It flew above, bigger than she had ever seen Drogon to be, and silvery, shimmering like white opal into the sunlight. It looked as if the moon had suddenly appeared in the heaves at midday. Only that the moon would not breathe fire upon them.

A second one materialized above as if from thin air. It was smaller and red like a bright flame. They breathed fire in their direction but they never burnt them.

“If I didn’t know better, I would say it is trying to chase us away,” the old Braavosi sailor told Arya.

“Chase us away? From what?”

“Again if I didn’t know better, I would say the Isle of Naath,” he answered.

“I didn’t know Naath was protected by dragons,” she said.

“It’s not or at least, it wasn’t when we set sail. It used to be protected by butterflies, since the Naathi are so peaceful they wouldn’t even defend themselves from invaders. The butterflies cause a fever that melts the flesh off your bones. The mere idea would keep me away forever but slavers and pirates found a way and still kidnapped the Naathi to sell them off to whoever paid the most.”

Arya’s hand tightened on the pommel of Needle. “I thought there was only one dragon left in the left in the world.”

The man smiled ruefully. “One is enough. A dragon lays eggs. Eggs hatch and then there is nowhere left to run.” His face darkened as he rattled off a few instructions to his fellow crew mates about doing just that: running away from dragons. “Of course, the Ashai’i claim there have always been and that there always will be dragons in the Shadow Lands beyond their city.”

“Of course,” Arya muttered, the ghost cries of burning women and children ringing in her ears.

After that, however, they sailed relatively unbothered towards Essos, the idea of going to the Summer Isles abandoned, lest they ran into dragons again. As they advanced to the Gulf of Grief, the sea grew lighter in color and the sun beat down on them relentlessly as if it hadn’t heard it was supposed to be winter. Arya was restless. Before she had seen the dragons, she had been planning to replenish her food and crew in Essos and sail to Ulthos, see what was there aside from woods. Maybe after that she would finally allow herself to return home again. But the sight of dragons had disturbed her, making her anxious to return to Westeros and hope not to find it turned into an ash-covered waste.

The cries of dragons broke through Arya’s fitful sleep one night. At first, she had thought it another nightmare but then she heard the terrified, hushed whispers of her men outside her door and ran out, Needle in hand. Above their ship, the sky was black as tar and devoid of stars or a moon but fires lit it up every now and then. In their flicker they caught glimpses of the monstrous, flying beings. They seemed to swarm above. Everyone held their breath but no fire rained down on them.

“What port is that?” Arya asked gesturing to the lighthouses that could be seen on the horizon. There was cold sweat on her nape but she refused to be afraid.

“New Ghis,” someone replied. “If it still stands.”

“We’ll go around,” she commanded. “And find out.”

They had no choice. Not if they wished to eat any time soon.

The sun had come by the time they reached land. The sunrise was over in an instant, piercing, white rays lifting from the sea that was now almost turquoise in color. The dragons still swarmed above but they showed no interest in the ship. They saw other ships in the distance with sails from the cities of Slaver’s Bay, New Ghis, Volantis, Lys and Lorath but they were too far away to make contact and inquire if anything still lived ashore.

They went around the tiny island that housed New Ghis and saw the maroon pyramids apparently still intact. They came about towards the larger islands of Ghaen and caught the first glimpse of it. Awed hushes resounded around Arya. The city looked immense with topless towers like that of the fabled Valyria of old and pink marble pyramids raising above a sliver of white sand beach and a port bigger than the one Arya had seen in Braavos. Giant statues atop tall, green pillars dwarfed the waves. Higher up large palaces were nestled among palm trees on the gently sloped hills surrounding the city. And in the skies flew dragons, their colorful scales glittering in the sun. There had to be tens of them, hundreds even.

“How long have we been gone?” one of the sailors called out.

Arya didn’t answer, her eyes glued to the long banners flying above the port. They were black like the night, a red, three-headed dragon on their upper side, its tail longer than Arya recalled, going nearly all the way to the bottom where it wrapped around the roots of a lemon tree, its leaves bright green and its fruits plentiful and golden. The entire lower part of the banner was covered in slim, tall, glass like blades of grass.

The ship went into port before Arya could command it not to. Even if she did, she knew very well they had nowhere else to go. They were out of food and the crew was exhausted and shaken by their experiences. Even if it weren’t so, where would they have gone? Sothoryos was impossible to inhabit. Who knew what horrors awaited in Ulthos? The Targaryens had once taken Westeros with three dragons. With as many as she saw above, one could conquer the entire world easily.

No, Arya shook her head. _She_ was dead. She wasn’t coming back. There had to be another explanation for this.

She set foot on pier first, her hand gripping the pummel of Needle hard and her heart racing. The dock bellow her feet was made out of a sturdy, reddish kind of wood.

“You there,” she called to a passing boy who could be no older than thirteen. He had bronze skin, considerably fewer clothes than Arya, and a mop of dark, curly hair. “We have been lost at sea for a long time,” she lied, grateful for the High Valeryan she had picked up in Braavos. “Where are we?”

His eyes widened but the reply he gave her was gentle and polite. “You’re in the Dragon City of New Valyria on the Isle of Ghaen in the Gulf of Joy. There is a place for people such as you not far away from here. If you want, I can show you. They will give you free soup and sweet breads there by the mercy of Her Grace, the Queen Who Passed Beyond the Shadow.”

“The Queen? The queen of what?”

“The Queen of Essos, of course.”

At least, the didn’t say the queen of all the known world.

“What’s the queen’s name?”

“Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the Unburnt, Queen of Essos, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, but most people just call her Mhysa. So do you want me to take you to her house?”

Arya froze. “Her house?” she asked idly staring at two Unsullied soldiers who passed by but paid her no heed. The boy didn’t even notice them.

The boy laughed shaking his head. “Not her house. She lives in the Red Door,” he said gesturing towards a tower in the distance. It seemed to stand higher than the rest and was the only one that was of the color of fresh blood when it first poured into water. Atop it stood the gigantic statue of a crimson three-headed dragon. “It’s not a real door of course. That’s just what Mhysa calls her tower. The Houses of Mhysa are places where those who go hungry or lost travelers such as yourself can receive free food, if they need it.”

Arya frowned. It couldn’t be! It was as if she had stepped through a gate and into another world. It couldn’t be! _She_ was dead. Jon had killed her.

# # #

_A few years earlier_

Dany was dreaming and fully aware of it. A sweet lassitude that belied the ache in her chest spread through her limbs, drowning out any other sensation. She saw the black, greasy stone fall from the skies like heavy rain. It landed in different places in the world. People found it and bowed to it, for the stone held magic and power. They built idols and cities out of it. Wherever the stone was found, magic bloomed like never before. New rites and spells were cast every day and the mages grew more powerful all the time. Shadowbinders rose and they looked human, though inside they were pure fire.

A young prince called the dark rock bloodstone and began worshiping it and whoever sent it to earth. He slew his sister the empress, took a tiger for his bride and moved from the bright port city that used to house the capital to one in the valley of a river bordered by mountains so tall they all but reached the clouds. Dany saw horror and rituals darker than she could have ever imagined. The river ran red with blood and the cries of the victims filled the city all night, terrifying the inhabitants.

Then the night came. The true night, long as years and filled with untold, wholly new terrors. The mountains were bent from within, nearly covering the city, taking its light away. Everything died. The water became poison and the few survivors, men and beast alike, became twisted and hideous, beyond recognition. The shadows descended all the way to the port and nothing grew anymore.

Only a few ships managed to steal away, the dragons that had always lived in the Shadow, lighting their way with their fire. In time, after the long night ended, they found a lush, green peninsula filled with peaceful shepherds who welcomed them with opened arms. The shepherds looked just like Dany: they had pale skin, silver hair and purple eyes. The newcomers settled there, mixed with the shepherds and taught them the ways of magic and of riding dragons. Until they became greedy and cruel and everything exploded around them.

But from the Doom hope arose anew as one family of dragonriders flew away to safety.

Daenerys opened her eyes but saw only pitch blackness, the air inky with it and filled with the stir of creatures that could not be alive. The left side of her chest was burning, the lassitude of the dream shattered. She sat up awkwardly, her temples throbbing as she moved. From the corners she could feel them watching her. Demons, the remnants of the dead and other creatures of darkness.

There was no doubt in her mind. The thought was as clear as the knowledge that her name was Daenerys and that she was dead. She knew exactly where she was: Stygai, the corpse city at the Heart of Darkness. The place that even Shadowbinders like Melissandre feared. The city of the dead from where nobody living had ever returned.

She saw them: milky white with faces that had no mouth or eyes, reaching for her with ghostly hands with long, slim fingers.

_Run_ , whispered a voice in her mind. She doubted her feet would carry her but still rose. She felt weak, drained. She got up on unsteady legs and ran. Whispers in dire languages she had never heard before surrounded her. A knot of black fire with what looked like a fish head reached for her. She darted out of its way, bumped into something. Something else crashed to the ground on her heels, as she ran. Her eyes began to adjust to the blackness if only a little. All around her she saw derelict walls, split roofs and blackened splintered towers. Above her the sky looked like molten tar.

The whispers drew closer and she ran again, narrowly dodging cracked face with hands the wanted to grab at her. She reached a broken arch and beyond it she saw the green glimmer of the river Ash. She took a moment to catch her breath. The air was stifling and suffused with ash. She could feel it in her nostrils and taste it on the back of her tongue. A sharp wail pierce the night and she realized something was flying above her head. It was not the comforting cry of a dragon. Something else was coming for her. Dany wondered if this was her punishment for burning King’s Landing. She thought she heard the cries of burning women and children in the wailing. Perhaps she wasn’t in Stygai after all. Maybe she was in one of the Seven Hells described by the Faith of the Seven or maybe in the one Hell of the religion of R’hllor, destined fpr eternal torment.

_Go across the bridge_ , the voice murmured. It repeated itself when she hesitated so she ran across the sloped bridge over the green glowing river. It shook and creaked under her feet rattling as if it was about to collapse and abandon her to whatever monster lurked in the waters bellow. But she made it safely across to a domed building with shattered columns upfront. Statues, misshapen and terrible, lined the narrow street that lead up to it. She had statues like that before: in Vaes Dothrak and Ser Jorah had told her they had to come from the Shadow Lands beyond Ashai. So she was in Stygay after all, though she had no idea how she had ended up there. Was Stygai not of this world but the place people went to when they died?

The leathery sound of wings above her head drew nearer so she sought refuse in the building before her, not knowing what horrors awaited her inside. She found nothing but a large, round hall under the dome. At the center of it stood a single tall, headless statue. She advanced towards as if drawn by a thrall. Vine like claws wrapped around her right ankle and toppled her to the ground. She screamed and the echo carried the sound back to her. The sheer terror in her voice frightened her further. The claws began to drag her away. She struggled and tried to kick them off and free herself.

_Reach,_ the voice guided and she did, flailing blindly, a crack in the stone slicing her palm and letting the blood flow free. She heard the drops hit the ground and the city seemed to come alive around her. Thousands of monstrous hands made for her, while vines wrapped around her free ankle. The whispers and the wailing grew into a hurricane of sounds, shouts, cackling and inhuman screams. It was unwise to shed blood in place so ripe with magic.

Her scrambling right hand closed around what felt like the pummel of a sword and she lifted it above her head hurriedly. Whatever came at her, she would slice at least the first wave. She gripped the sword harder in her despair, putting her injured left hand around it too. That instant it burgeoned into flames bringing light to the what looked like a ruined temple. The city screamed once more with thousands of voices then grew silent. Completely and utterly silent. Not even one whisper could be heard. The vines released her and the monstrosities receded back from her, scurrying out of the hall.

Breath shuddering out of her lungs uncertainly, Daenerys rose to her feet holding the flaming sword above her head.

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

Touch my mouth _  
_ And hold my tongue _  
_ I'll never be your chosen one _  
_ I'll be home, safely tucked away _  
_ You can't tempt me if I don't see the day.  
(Mumford & Sons, _Broken Crown_ )

  


_Then_

The lords of the Small Council bickered because that was they always did.

“In Dorne Princess Arianne Martell proclaimed herself queen. She’s declared Dorne independent and vowed to defend it against any and all foreign invaders, which is what we are in her view,” Grand Maester, Samwell “Sam” Tarly, explained.

Tyrion rubbed his temples. His eyes were bloodshot. Whether he had been drinking or not, he clearly not spent the previous night sleeping. The Three-Eyed Raven found checking upon him a tedious affair. “We’ll add her to the list. At least, she didn’t proclaim herself Queen of the Seven Kingdoms like Edmure Tully did the second he arrived home. Meanwhile what little army we have left is still pinned in Riverrun dealing with him. The Ironborn, whom Yara Greyjoy wasted no time in returning to the Old Way, are pillaging and reaving as far as they can reach.”

“There is a raven from the North,” Ser Davos interjected. “The Queen in the North requests our aid against them. The Northern houses are weakened and depleted by the recent wars and the White Walkers incursion. They have a hard time fending off the Ironborn.”

“Why should we help them?” Bronn wanted to know. “With all due respect, Your Grace,” he said glancing towards the King but upon noting his vacant expression and white glazed eyes, he continued. “Your sister wanted to be independent. Independent kingdoms fight their own battles but all she does is ask for our help. At first, it was food, now she wants us to commit forces we don’t have to her causes.”

“We can’t let them starve,” Brienne protested.

“We’ll all gonna starve if we keep sharing around our food,” Bronn countered.

“We can’t be doing that badly,” Ser Davos responded. “The Seven Kingdoms have always gathered grain in summer in preparation for winter.”

It was Tyrion who answered. “We have. When summer ended, the Seven Kingdoms had enough grain to last us through a five-year winter. Then the country dissolved into several civil wars. That wiped half of that. How long do the Maesters expect this winter to last?”

Sam cast fearful gazes at his table companions. “We have had the longest summer in living memory. Seven years. If we are lucky, the winter will last just as long. But given that White Walkers have come this winter and the last time they did, the world knew the longest winter ever….”

“How long?” Ser Davos interrupted impatiently.

“A generation,” Sam replied in a hushed tone of voice.

“Let’s be generous and say it won’t last this long, we couldn’t survive a fiver-year winter, let alone a seven-year or a ten-year one. And it’s not just the North, it’s all of us. We simply don’t have enough food.”

Bronn threw his arms apart. “Then we’ll buy some. Essos has plenty of it.”

Tyrion scowled at him. “Correct if I am wrong, Master of Coin, but where is the coin for that? There have been wars and there has been chaos in the Realm. What wasn’t sold for weapons was stolen. Our coffers are empty. We can’t even pay the Iron Bank.”

“So don’t pay them,” Bronn said.

“Don’t pay them?” Tyrion scoffed. “Ser Davos, you have dealt with the Iron Bank while you were Stannis’ Hand. Kindly inform our Master of Coin what happens when the Iron Bank doesn’t have its due.”

“They found rebellions upon rebellions until they manage to install a king or queen who does pay the debt,” Ser Davos explained grimly.

“Mayhaps we can talk to them, explain our predicament,” Brienne said. “I doubt they would want an entire continent to starve only for them to have their due.”

“You do not have much experience dealing with banks, either, Ser Brienne,” Tyrion mumbled. “They don’t care if the whole world starves if they can get their money back.”

“What about the Lannister mines?” Ser Davos inquired. “They produce enough gold to cover the debt to the Iron Bank and more.”

Tyrion bowed his head. “The mines are dry. They have been for quite some time. My father cleverly hid that but after spending literal fortunes on the many wars we fought since Robert Baratheon died, not even we, Lannisters, are rich as… well, Lannisters.”

Bran wasn’t listening. He was flying far and away searching to the edge of the known world and beyond. He had seen Drogon fly East with the body of Daenerys Targaryen and knew that the dragon had not gone to Volantis but further east. Always further east. He had seen the Shadow where he had once glimpsed dragons stirring and then nothing. He had seen the Heart of Darkness but he could not see into it. Stygai, the corpse city, had no past, present or future. And Bran couldn’t see. He couldn’t see into Stygai.

# # #

_Now_

Her throne room was large and perfectly round, the walls blood red just like the marble that made her tower. Her floor-to-ceiling banners spread on the walls were the only decoration. Her throne stood in the middle of the room mounted on a platform no taller than a foot made out of the same carmine stone. Her throne was simple—a large, tall chair carved from dragonglass and bearing no ornaments. The dragonglass both symbolic and practical. It hit the chunks of black, oily stone that had been embedded in her throne in secret. The stone drank the sunlight that spilled richly from the many tall yet narrow windows in the room making her appear as if she was sitting in a knot of darkness. It spoke to those proficient in magic in both threats and songs and she could see the effect with her very eyes on the emissaries from Qohor who squirmed visibly as she looked upon them.

Life-size, painted statues of Rhaegal and Viseryon stood on each side of her throne. There were dragons on her crown too: a simple yet thick circlet of Valeryan steel with the characteristic pattern in the metal its only decoration. A three-headed dragon made from dragonglass rose from the steel just above her forehead. She always wore her riding clothes to official functions and they too were fashioned to appear as if they had dragon scales on them. She didn’t wear white or gray anymore but favored black, the various shades of red, blue, golden yellow and brown. She still braided her hair like a Khaleesi and her Bloodriders stood on the steps to the platform housing her throne with her advisers and magistrates. Lightbringer was always on her hip. She never parted ways with the sword. She even slept with her next to her or under her pillow.

“You stand in the presence of Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, Queen of Essos, Khaleesi of the Great Grass Sea, Breaker of Chains, Mother of Dragons, the Queen Who Passed Beyond the Shadow, the Unburnt. Come forth and be heard.”

The emissaries from Qohor introduced themselves.

“Welcome to New Valyria,” Dany said with a small, tight smile. “I trust you found your accommodations pleasant, far pleasant than the living conditions of the slaves you still keep in secret despite my prohibition.”

“This has always been our way, Your Grace,” the eldest of the delegates responded. “Besides, your edicts also assure tolerance of all forms of worship.”

“An edict Qohor protested vehemently, if my memory serves me. It is no matter. You may worship what you please but you will not sacrifice slaves as young as infants to it.”

“But that is how we worship, Your Grace.”

“Then sacrifice yourselves to your god, if you have the strength of your convictions,” Daario interjected from the steps to the platform.

Dany hid a smile. “Suicide I cannot condone but I cannot stop it, either, as long as it is the choice of grown men. The blood sacrifice of children, however, I will not tolerate, regardless of purpose.”

“I suppose this is the moment when you threaten to descended from the heavens on your dragons and burn us all if we do not comply,” a younger delegate snapped haughtily.

This time Dany did smile. “No. Qohor likes to make human sacrifices to dark things so I shall assist it in this matter. I have been to Stygai before and returned. I shall go back there and brings more dark things who thirst for human for Qohor to honor. I shall leave them in your city and observe how you defend your customs when it is your infants they take.” She paused for effect. “Have I made myself clear or shall I take on a leisurely stroll through my lemon grove to illustrate my point?”

“No, Your Grace, that would not be necessary.”

Everybody knew she had brought more than dragons from the Shadow Lands.

“Very well, we will consider this matter settled then. My magistrates will return to your city in disguise as they have before and for your sake I hope they will find everything to be in accordance to the law. If they do not, I trust I have made fully aware of the consequences.”

“You have done that indeed, Your Grace.”

She nodded. “Take two more days to enjoy the capital and my hospitality. Thank you for your visit. I shall return it sometime. As you know, I enjoy visiting my kingdom.”

“It will be our honor to have you among us, Your Grace.”

She smiled openly, now that they were back to pleasantries again, and promised a few lavish gifts to the city. She had discovered that a mixture of sticks and fruit made for a very compelling policy.

“You should have let the horde sack the city, Khaleesi,” her bloodrider commented once the delegates left.

This time her smile was genuine. “Perhaps the next time they disobey. What’s next?”

“Tycho Nestorios of the Iron Bank requested an audience, My Queen,” Daario said carefully.

Her mood doured in an instant. Normally she liked dealing with Braavos. They were practical, reasonable and both understood and supported her idea of rebuilding a less cruel, slave free Valyria. In fact, the city had joined her kingdom voluntarily, realizing the profit in being part of a large empire that could properly safeguard commerce. Today, however, she was anything but eager to deal with the Iron Bank. Ignore the biggest bank in Essos, she could not, though. One slighted the Iron Bank at their own peril. Banks were powerful in way few understood. An army of dragons could only do so much against the insidious power of money. Dany had courted the banks ever since her conquest of Essos had extended to the Free Cities.

Tycho Nestorios bowed respectfully before her. She had an inkling no ruler had been thus honored. The Iron Bank obeyed her not because she was Queen of Essos. They were not impressed by her reputation or even by her trip to Stygai. They respected her because she kept a third of her Crown’s gold in their vaults and had even authorized them to make investments on her behalf.

“I have come to you on behalf on both the Iron Bank and Volantine banks. We have brought gifts for Your Grace.”

Volantine banks! As in plural! And her day had started so well. She thanked him for the gifts, sent a few of her own in return then leaned back on her throne.

“How much does Westeros own you and the banks of Volantis?”

“You do not waste time, Your Grace,” Nestorios pointed out.

“Time means money to the Iron Bank, some of it mine.”

Nestorios grinned. “It is so refreshing to speak to a queen who understands that. Unfortunately, that is not the case with Westeros.”

“Mainly because they have not one king… or queen. How many are there now? I keep losing track.”

“It is rather hard to keep track,” he replied. “However, it is the one who sits on what used to be the Iron Throne who counts and Bran the Broken shows little to know interest in the affairs of his kingdom. He lets his Small Council do what it pleases and what the Small Council does, it does badly.”

Dany narrowed her eyes. “How much?”

“Twenty-five million.”

An awed silence fell over the room.

“You would have to sell half of Westeros to pay that back,” Daario remarked.

“Nobody would buy it,” her bloodrider grumbled. He was one of the few survivors of her ill-fated Westeros campaign. “Especially the North.”

Dany kept her attention on the matter at hand. “How much they have paid back so far?”

“Not one copper. Five years ago, when Bran Stark was made king, we made a reasonable request for at least a portion of the interest. The new Master of Coin, a sellsword who obviously fails to understand the basic principles of loans, ran our delegates out of King’s Landing. He threatened to cut their heads off if they ever returned. Then he borrowed money from all the major Volantine banks. He hasn’t paid them back, either.”

“The Iron Bank does not need my permission to get its gold back,” Dany remarked airily.

“Aye, we do not. Unfortunately, there is not one reliable pretender to the throne of Westeros, nobody who could unite the Seven Kingdoms again and organize them in one kingdom capable of paying off their debts.”

“But if you could persuade me to take Westeros, then their debt would be mine and I can afford to pay. Tell me, why would I risk men and resources to invade a broken down kingdom that hates me, doesn’t want me back and has already killed me once?”

“Your ancestors took Westeros with three dragons. You have hundreds of them. As for soldiers, we would pay for as many sellswords as you want so you would not have to risk the Unsullied and the Dothraki in Westeros again. I will not speak of your bloodright to the throne or of revenge. You know the language of numbers well, Your Grace. The Iron Bank and the Volantine banks are in agreement. If you were to take Westeros, we are willing to write off a part of the debt and support the reconstruction. I am sure we can come to a mutually profitable agreement. We have done so before.”

She stifled a sight. Her heart was heavy and her head was throbbing, the scar on her chest itching. “You have given me much to think about. I will consider your words, speak to my advisers and give you answer.”

“The Dragon Queen is most gracious as usually.”

# # #

Dany grabbed a piece of pig meat from the box her Dothraki handmaid was carrying and flung it to the basilisk in the ornate iron cage. She wiped her hand on the white linen another handmaid held out to her then scratched the animal on the top of its head absently. In her grove, the lemon trees were in bloom. Not far away a sphynx atop a short white marble column was annoying a few learned men from Qarth with its riddles. Men and women came from all over Essos to try and decipher the famous riddles of her sphynxes.

She heard steps approaching but did not startle. Her guards, Unsullied as well as Dothraki, were everywhere. There were dragons in the skies and magic safeguards in place. She was safe as she could be here. Besides, she knew those heavy steps. She turned to Daario knowing what he would say before he opened his mouth.

“I’m not sure I’m comfortable serving a queen the banks like,” he liked.

“Banks only want one thing. They only care about numbers and numbers are clear, easy to interpret. They do not betray you, lie to you or use your heart against you. I find comfort in their clarity. That they also help me rule is an added benefit.”

“Nestorios came here for the Iron Bank’s own gain but that doesn’t mean he is wrong. Westeros is in such a sorry state, it would be easy to take it.”

“Many things are easy. It does not mean they should be done.”

“Is this about what happened in King’s Landing five years ago? Because one error in judgment does not define you, My Queen.”

“It was more than an error in judgment on my part but I have made my peace with it. I will have to live with what I did every single day for the rest of my life. That is my penance. If the Lengii and the people on Yi Ti border are right and I am the Goddess-on-Earth, the avatar of the God-on-Earth emperor returned from the stars, then it will be a thousand-year old sentence. It is no less than what I deserve.”

“What about what those people deserve for what they’ve done to you?”

“If half of the news from Westeros is true, I would say they are already reaping their reward.”

“So we are not going to Westeros?”

Dany turned her gaze to the delicate, white flowers of the lemon trees. She could have as many of them as she wanted now. Her right hand found the pummel of Lightbringer, the heft of comforting against her palm. She desperately didn’t want to go to Westeros.

“People say _Valar morghulis_ often but forget about the other half of it: _Valar dohaeris_. I suppose it is because it is easier to die than to serve. I should know, having done them both.” She watched the men from Qarth depart scratching their heads. “There is a wolf on my shore. Find her and bring her to me. Then we will discuss Westeros again.”

She reached into a pocket and extracted an iron Braavosi coin. She looked down on it, running her hand upon its markings. “Valar dohaeris,” she murmured, every breath painful as it shuddered its way out of her straining lungs.

# # #

The blackness, so thick it had a body of its own, enveloped her but in the midst of it there were only flames and screams. The ashen bodies of her victims stretched as far as the eye could see.

_Be with me…. Queen of the ashes…. Mhysa, Mhysa!…. We break the wheel together._

_You are my queen, now and always._

“It’s alright. You’re only dreaming.”

There was a hand on her face, tender and careful. Her head rolled on the pillow to face Daario. She could feel that her eyes were filled with tears. A concerned frown marred his handsome face.

“Was I screaming again?” she asked.

He nodded before he got up to fetch her a drink of water. “You were.” He waited for her patiently to drink. “Perhaps you would sleep better if had a glass of wine with dinner. Just one.”

She shook her head. “Magic is intoxicating enough. Dangerous enough. I have lost control with dragon fire before. I cannot do with magic now. I have seen what happens when magic gets the better of people.” She reached for the flame of the bedside candle he had lit after he had shaken her awake. Two of fingers slipped into the fire and extended the flame into the Valeryan glyph for her name.

He was as nonplussed as always by her abilities, old and new alike. “Where have you seen it? In Stygai? Was that what you were dreaming of?”

“No,” she said in a small voice and looking away.

“If you don’t want to conquer Westeros, fine. I say let those savages starve and freeze to death. It’s no less than what they deserve. But let me go. You know I can sneak in anywhere. I’ll find _him_ and cut him into twenty-seven pieces, spread them into the winds and let the animals feast on him.”

She settled on her back. He had been making this offer on and off since he had told him who had killed her. She reached to cup his left cheek with one hand. “I wish I could marry you.”

He burst into laughter. _“_ When you married in Meereen, I was unhappy because no man wishes to see the woman he loves marry another. When you left me behind when you first sailed for Westeros, I was unhappy because I did not want to lose you. But even I am not enough of a fool to think a queen could marry the fatherless son of a whore.”

“And why not? I have hundreds of dragons, many armies and the support of the biggest banks in the known world. I don’t need marital alliances to strengthen my rule. I strengthen my rule myself!”

“Then how about this? You don’t love me.”

“No, but I wish that I did. I wish I loved you or Ser Jorah. It would have been so much simpler and I could have been happy. But I do trust you and I have come to learn that is the most precious thing in the world.”

“I know you trust me. That’s why Lightbringer is by your bed instead of in bed with us. But the heart… the heart is another matter entirely. The heart makes its own choices. Look at me! I’m nobody, a sellsword born out of a whore and I dare love a queen I could never have wholly to myself. I understand that you love a man you can never trust.”

“It wasn’t me who loved him but the woman he killed.” She sat up on the bed. “Do you mind?”

“No, of course not.”

She got up and got dressed, grabbed Lightbringer and left. She descended the stairs of her tower, her guards never far behind. The dragonpits were close by and spread for miles. Drogon’s was the one closest to the Red Door. She called to him and he answered like he always did. She crawled under his wing and rested her head on his scales, her right hand on the pummel of the sword, then closed her eyes. Beyond the enormity of Drogon’s body, in the adjacent pits, she could hear the songs of the young dragons rising towards the night skies.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is not an anti-Jon Snow fic. Dany is just an unreliable narrator and suffers from PTSD.


	3. Chapter 3

High in the halls of the kings who are gone  
Jenny would dance with her ghosts  
The ones she had lost and the ones she had found  
And the ones who had loved her the most.  
(Florence + the Machine, _Jenny of Oldstones_ )

_Now_

“You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

He whirled around and saw Ygritte her gaze equal parts love and condemnation.

“He broke his oath….”

“The law is law….”

He startled and Ygritte disappeared like fine vapor in the cold air. He turned in the other direction and there he stood: his father or at least, the man whom he would always remember as his father.

“Why, son, why?”

“I will fight for you.”

Dany stood before him dressed in white, healthy and radiant, her eyes warm with love. Then a rivulet of blood slipped out of the left corner of her mouth. He saw the knife in her chest. When she lifted her hands up to show them to him, they were covered in blood.

“Why, Jon, why? I loved you….”

He shook his head, the words coming out of his throat raspy and tear-stained. “You burnt a city. You killed all those people. You were going to kill more….”

“At least, I didn’t kill my queen, Oathbreaker… Kinslayer….”

He jolted awake to the sound of Ghost whining at his side. He groped for the familiar fur blindly in the dark.

“What’s wrong, Ghost? Come here.”

The insides of his small tent were pitch black. The nights were long in the North especially in winter. He scratched Ghost behind his ears but it didn’t seem to calm down the direwolf. Instead he started to growl menacingly his glowing eyes fixed on the entrance to the tent.

“What’s wrong, boy?” he asked again. “What’s there?”

He sat up, untangled himself from his bedding, put on his cloak, grabbed Longclaw and slipped out. He and the Wildlings were camped at the Fist of the First Men where the surrounding peaks offered a bit of protection against the violent winds of winter. He spent most of his time beyond the Wall now that there was no real need for a Night’s Watch. In fact, shortly after his arrival at the Wall, he wrote to Bran and Sansa requesting that the surviving members of the Night’s Watch who wished to leave be released from their vows. His request had been granted and now only a few older men remained at Castle Black to maintain it and keep it from falling into ruin. Such was the state of things the last time he had been there but it had been years since then. There was nothing left for him at the Wall or south of it. Leading the Free Folk and helping them survive the winter still provided him with a purpose even as he adamantly refused the title they called him behind his back: King Beyond the Wall.

The night was even darker outside than inside the tent, if that were possible. The air felt like tiny particles of ice as he sucked it into his lungs. A fire burnt towards the middle of the encampment. It was slowly dying out and in the light of its fading, orange flames he saw the Wildlings that he had ordered to stand guard for the night. It was probably purposeless and he had heard a grumble about it here and there. The Night’s Watch was no longer hounding then, the White Walkers were gone and the animals that still remained beyond the Wall were just as skittish and as hungry as the people. Still he couldn’t shake the brunt of awareness that hovered on the edges of his consciousness. It had been years but he still felt like he was at war. That was during the day. At night the nightmares came bringing their own army of the dead with them.

The sky was starless and nothing seemed to disturb the peace of the night. He looked to Tordmund’s tent next to his. It was as quiet as the rest. Ghost followed his out, a low growl still spilling from him. Jon crouched next to him and patted at the back of his neck.

“What’s got you so agitated all of the sudden, Ghost?” he asked. He trusted his direwolf’s instincts. Agitation built in his gut too. Every instinct he had screamed danger.

He got up and went to have a talk with the guards. In the dark, deep pits of his mind coming back from the dead had opened something stirred and wailed, its voice one of sorrows lost and found anew. The snow cracked beneath his feet, the sound too much like a warning. Despite the cold a shiver as hot as fire trembled down his spine. There was something out there in the night. He could tell. Ghost could tell as well.

He was just about to call to the men and women standing guard when he heard it. The familiar and terrible call of the horn at Castle Black. He froze in place. There were no more reasons for it to call. There were no more Rangers venturing beyond the Wall, only a few old men who looked after the keep. Then the horn called again. Twice for Wildlings. But the Free Folk hadn’t attacked the Wall since he had let them beyond it and paid for it with his life. The horn called again. A third time. Thrice for White Walkers.

# # #

Dany’s eyes opened. She was warm, cocooned in the wing of Drogon. Her gaze met only darkness and for the briefest the moments she thought she was still back in the Shadow. It wasn’t dread she felt but relief. It was short-lived, however. The nights were longer in winter even in the East. She felt the blood in her veins unfurl into fire and twist into shadow. Drogon moved around and lifted his head towards the starless skies, his song echoing glumly into the night. A warning. Drogon picked on her moods with growing ease these days.

She slipped from beneath her child’s wing and went around to pet him on his enormous muzzle. Drogon was gigantic now, bigger than any of the wild dragons who had come back with her from the Shadow Lands. She suspected he was even bigger than the famed Balerion the Black Dread. She suspected the world hadn’t seen such a large dragon since the times of Old Valyria.

“It’s alright,” she soothed her son, pushing back the flow of nostalgia. The whole world dreaded the Shadow Lands but every now and then something in her called for them and for the Heart of Darkness. “It’s alright,” she repeated dully. She felt strange as if disengaged from her own body.

With one palm between Drogon’s nostrils he chanted her mantra in her head. The same words she had been whispering to herself every morning for five years.

“Grief and wrath kill the mind. I shall not lose control of myself again. I shall survey my every action and learn to ponder my every word. I am not mad and I shall not go mad. I shall never again become queen of the ashes.” She took a deep breath. “In memory of Missandei. In memory of Jorah. In memory of Ser Barristan. In memory of my lost children. In memory of those I burnt in King’s Landing.”

# # #

_Then_

The sword changed everything. For once she didn’t have to trip over everything on her way. It was quite literally her light in the darkness. The monsters and ghosts and other twisted things that lurked around let her be as she wandered around the city for the first time in her life purposeless. If alive was what she was, which she doubted it.

She swung the sword around her like a lantern. The city seemed built of oily black stone. Wherever she looked there were collapsed spires, walls that were bent out of shape and cracked domes. Some of the arched bridges over the glowing river still stood but not all of them. In places the constructions were plain and stark but in others the stone was cut in ways she had never seen before, its surface worked to look like lace. Beneath her boots the stone was of a lighter color. In fact, it reminded her of limestone. Limestone that was fused together so perfectly that it had not a single crack in it. Dany knew what had fused the stone of the roads together. She had seen it in her dreams before waking up.

For how long she roamed like that, she did not know but instead of growing weaker and more tired she felt her strength starting to return. Her feet seemed to grow steadier with each step. And she was not hungry or thirsty. She didn’t know if it was the effect of the city or of the sword. She was beginning to get a sense of how the city was structured: wide streets bordered by spires and domed buildings stopped to form large square, marketplace at crossroads. Smaller and narrower streets webbed from the main streets and the buildings were less grand there but still taller than she had seen even in Quarth.

All the wide streets had short, plain pillars made of iron every tenth of a mile or so. Some had collapsed and their ends were surrounded by shattered glass. She had seen that in her dream too: there had used to be a bright green substance burning in the glass lighting the night as if it were day.

Slowly the thick darkness above her head began to fade until the sky turned a deep gray. Somewhere very high above, at midday, she saw what looked like a tiny, pale lamp and realized it was the sun. On the line of the horizon the jagged edges of the mountains stood, their peaks as dark as the stone of the city around her.

_Come,_ the whisper came into her mind again. _It has been so long._

_I have never been here before._

“I have never been here before,” she said out loud.

The city trembled, thousands of hushed voice wailing at the sound of her voice echoing through the ruins. How many millennia had it been since Stygai had heard a human voice?

At least, she knew where to go now, though that part of her that loved to be contrary protested the notion. But then what else was there to do? Was she to wander the streets of a corpse city until hunger, thirst and exhaustion killed her? Assuming she was alive again, of course.

She came across a row of columns twice as tall as her that were sculptured to look like women. They were so lifelike they seemed to be breathing. Their heads, perfectly detailed and beautiful, had snakes instead of hair and their dresses were decorated with what looked like real rubies, pearls and sapphires. She could almost be fascinated if a figure with a fish head and arms and legs hadn’t been following her since she had turned the most recent corner. She spun around and lifted the sword which came ablaze. The monster gave a dry, laugh like scream and ran away. Not far from the columns she found a wide, open place filled with gigantic statues of dragons. The statues appeared to be made from gold with amber eyes.

By the time she had cross the field of statues the light—such as it was—was gone and the city was plunged into the thick darkness of before once again. She lifted the sword to light her way but all she could see was what looked like a tall wall of the black stone for as far as the eye could see. There was an opening, however, and it stood right in front of her. She went through it and at first, all she saw was more of the murky darkness. Then she saw the eyes: like a thousand lanterns of molten gold fire. It treated closer and she raised her sword again. The body, if that was what it was, was formless then it took the shape of a giant dragon, one much bigger than Drogon, but the head was wrong: it resembled a squid more than anything else.

“Who are you?” she asked, gripping the pommel of the sword harder.

_I am the dreamer that lies dead across the eons_ , it whispered in her mind.

She shook her head, fighting to focus. “Why am I here?”

_The dragon brought his rider where no greenseer could ever see. The spells that keep me are the spells that rose you._

“Am I to stay here forever?”

_You will return for without you the line of the dragonriders will die and Azor Ahai will be born no more._

She frowned. “I’m cursed, I can’t have children.”

_Only death may pay for life. You had three dragons. You lost two. Then you lost your life. You shall have three dragonriders born of the other one left._

In that moment she knew she was alive. Pain radiated from the left side of her chest and blossomed in her body. On its footsteps came a sorrow so profound it threatened to choke her. Only someone living could hurt so badly.

“No,” she cried out, the sound wrenched from the depths of her being. She tossed the sword down. “No!”

It was all so clear in her mind. She could feel his lips on hers and could see the love she had thought she had seen in those deep, soulful eyes that had been her undoing since her first glimpse of him. She had heard his promise that she would always be his queen and felt the kiss that vowed that she would be more than that. Against all odds. Against all hope. She had love. He loved her and she loved him. He was hers and she was his. And not even his honor or his family or the whole accursed North could come between them. She hadn’t even felt the blade pierce her at first, her chest trembling with so much happiness she had thought she would burst at the seams from it. Then in an instant her eyes became blurry and her strength was gone, her body succumbing… succumbing…. She had believed she had been falling for hours. Perhaps she had. She realized she was dying at the very last moment. He had killed her!

“No,” she repeated vehemently. “I am not your toy! I do no believe in fate. I make my own fate. I don’t care what and who you are, a god or something else. I don’t care if I spend the rest of my life here among monsters and ghosts. I will not lie with the man who killed me. I will not give him children.” She was less certain of the last part but the fury of someone else deciding for her was too overwhelming not to shout it out. It felt so unbelievably cruel to have the impossible dream of human children of her own twisted like that, turned into yet another blade slashing at her heart.

_All men must serve!_

“I am no man!”

_Do you wish to choose your own fate? Very well. Choose you shall but first you will know._

“Know what?”

_The truth._

“Am I Azor Ahai? Is that the truth?”

_You are one but that does not suffice. There must always be another. Now come…. Come and know!_

Arms like tentacle of black fire reached for her and she let them draw her in. And she saw. And she knew the truth.

Once she did, she picked the sword back up without another protest. “Only death may pay for life. Who paid for my life?”

_You did. Nobody can return Stygai whole anymore. You are Daenerys Stormborn of the blood of the dragon but a piece of you will always remain here and a piece of Stygai will always be inside you._

# # #

She knew her way out of Stygai then and nothing that existed there, remnants of the life once thriving within the great city of magic, ever bothered her again. The city whispered and went about its way. And she just walked and walked like she had once walked through the Red Waste until the thick, dark pillars that were everything that remained of the main city gate came into view. Beyond them she heard the sounds of life: the wind through the grass, the voice of the river that had been so quiet in Stygai and the familiar cries of dragons.

Lightbringer raised to light her away, she walked to the pillars and once between them she turned and stared back. She felt it inside her: shadow blending with fire and blood and flesh and bone and a new power twisting with the old one. As she stepped through the gap between the pillars she felt it again: a part of her fire leave her and return to Stygai to stay.

The stalks of ghost grass were just as the Dothraki had described them: tall, far taller than her and milky white. They move in the wind like one body gleaming against the dark silhouettes of the mountains that were so high and their peaks so close they blocked out the sun. Thoughts of the Dothraki brought something else to the forefront of her mind. She bowed making her head stray locks of hair fall from her braid. She grabbed at them, pulling without mercy, and raise the sword with care then tipped it and slashed at her hair until one by one the locks fell to the ground like shards of silver. When she was done she let the sword drop from her nerveless fingers before she fell to her hands and knees herself and emptied her stomach of bile and blood. Then she raised her head towards the bent tips of the mountains above and started to holler and holler and holler.

# # #

She slashed a path through the ghost grass with the sword that had come to her. It was short trek to the mountains but outside the walls of Stygai she was beginning to feel the early stirrings of exhaustion. Her mouth tasted awfully and she was thirsty. The mountains seemed to be pure stone but it wasn’t the black one of the city. No, this one was just granite. The were cut unevenly, filled of cave entrances that looked like splinters in the stone, and rock edges that lifted before her like knives. She looked up wondering what she was supposed to do. She had a firm grasp on the map of Essos. Down the river stood Asshai by the Shadow. The Ash river crossed Stygai and flowed towards it. If she could crawl her way on the rocks just above the ghost grass perhaps she could follow the river to the port city. But first she needed to find water.

Something stirred next to her left foot and she grabbed her sword. The basilisk hissed and drew back. Dany studied it curiously. Much like dragons, they were thought to be extinct. Out of the corner of one eye she glimpsed more movement. Slowly inchingaway from the basilisk she wiped her head around. In the light of her sword she saw them: they had bodies as tall as men but their eyes were opaque and dark, their faces carved like those of fish, long robes pale like the grass covered their bodies, only webbed, deformed hands and feet were visible where the cloth ended. Behind them, crawling out of the caves and from between the rocks, there came more and they were even more misshapen. She recalled the statues seen once long ago in Vaes Dothrak, the one Jorah had told her they had been plundered from the Shadows. Basilisks slithered between the newcomers, basilisks and small dragons.

She heard the sound of flapping wings behind her. Dany could hear a thousand birds and a thousand dragons and she would still know the sound of her child approaching. Drogon landed behind her as he had done many times before and curled the tip of a wing around her legs. Dany stood there with Drogon at her back and Lightbringer held in her hands before her face.

“I am Daenerys Targaryen of the blood of the dragon,” she called out in High Valeryan. “I am among the last of the Dragonriders, of the line of Azor Ahai.”

One by one the manlike creatures knelt before her. The basilisks and the one or two sphinxes and even a few chimeras crawled back into whatever cracks in the rocks they inhabited. Only the dragons came closer, crowding at her feet, stretching her necks towards her, singing a song that sounded like an invitation. More wings flapped behind her as new and bigger dragons came and sat atop the rocks and called to her, announcing to one and to all that their blood had at long last returned to the Shadow.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the kudos, comments and insights. I'm sorry I haven't had the time to answer. Enjoy a new chapter instead. I hope this one answers a few questions.


	4. Chapter 4

_Now_

Dany stuck to a strict daily routine. She woke up early and saw to her Dragons. She had chosen the Isle of Ghaen to build her new capital in part because it was deserted. The woods were sparse, mostly a thick grove here and there, while the rest of the island was made up of grass-covered hills and plains where she invited shepherds to settle promising the land their herds would need for grazing to them and their progeny in perpetuity. In exchange, they would give over their sheep and goats to feed her dragons. It was arrangement that paid off so well she soon had more offers than she had space.

After she made sure her dragons were fed and calm and verified if there were not any new eggs by chance, she fed the inhabitants of her lemon grove. Only after that did she break her fast. The Red Door was her home, not a palace. Its base was occupied by her throne room with an adjacent formal dining room, a council room and a study. Her private quarters were on the upper levels. She lived modestly. What she had mostly insisted upon was a lavish bath. And she lived alone safe for a few handmaidens to cook and clean for her.

If there were no urgent matters requesting her attention, she trained with Daario until lunch. After she had returned from the Shadow Lands, she had insisted that he taught her how to fight in all the main styles he had learned in the pits of Meereen. Lunch was usually a formal affair. She entertained foreign diplomats, her own magistrates and important guests from all over her kingdom. In the afternoon she held court listening to petitions and reports, giving commands and supervising her many projects. After a light supper she read reports too secret to be read out loud in public and books on the parts of her kingdom on which she had little information from before. She worked a lot but then she figured exhausted people were less likely to burn down entire cities.

This morning she followed her routine as it was her wont. She saw to her dragons and fed everyone in her lemon grove then she took a bath. When her handmaid would bring her a dress, she refused it and extracted black riding leathers from her closet herself. An elderly Dothraki woman braided her hair to reflect that past five years of victories. Dany felt a pang at the memory of Missandei and shoved the thought away.

_Grief kills the mind_ , she told herself. _If I look back, I am lost. If I look back, many will die._

She dismissed her handmaids once her hair was done and went rooting around in her large, teak wood weapons chest. She crossed two dragonglass, Asshai style daggers at her back and hid a Myrish stiletto in her right boot. There was something else at back of the chest: a red lacquer mask. Daario would not be happy to see it. He’d glimpsed it before and the fear had been palpable in the air between them. He had never said a word to her about it, though, and Dany had never brought it up herself. Daario was among the few who had never asked her what she had seen in the Shadow Lands and Stygai. She was alive and that was good enough for him.

Still he was afraid. Not that she had turned into some kind of monster or a worse kind of monster than she already was. Not of the dark arts she had learnt in her time beyond the Shadow. He was afraid that one day she might put on the mask—the red lacquer mask she cared for herself, reapplied the paint herself and cleaned herself—climb up on Drogon and fly back to the Shadow Lands never to return again.

She put on the mask and felt as if a long-missing piece of herself was sliding into place. Then she took out the long, inky blue cape from the chest and wrapped it around herself lifting the hood to cover her head. In Asshai she would have not looked out of place.

She got up and marched out, her heart all but leaping out of her chest. Some days it was all she could do not to put on the mask, climb up on Drogon and fly away to the Shadow Lands never to return again. This was one of those days.

# # #

“I thought they were all dead,” Tordmund whispered as they were hurriedly putting out the fires.

Jon took a finger to his lips. “So did I,” he ground out after a moment or two.

He had not been afraid in five long years. He had experienced dread, horror, guilt, grief and anger. But not fear. It beaded in cold drops on the back of his head now, though. It whistled in the sharp bellowing of the wind that ruffled his dark, fur cape. He saw it on the faces of every man, woman and child as the flames were being extinguished. The blackness soon became oppressive around them, the night too quiet, too steady around them. Jon had seen nights like this before. White Walkers had always come around times such as these. But the White Walkers were dead.

Jon lead the people to the rocky peaks surrounding the Fist of the First Men. If they tried to run, they would never make it far enough. They had women and children with them and they would slow them down too much. The rocks had cracks and caves in them. They could hide there and hope it was enough. He thought back to the first time he had been there and his educated guess that the First Men had come there to escape something inescapable. He thought of the Wall with a large chunk of it still missing. Nobody had bothered to rebuild it. Nobody had deemed it necessary. He thought to Castle Black manned only by a handful of old men and the other castles on the Wall, all abandoned now.

Had they been lulled into complacency? Had they forgotten the lessons of the North so easily? Had the Starks cast aside the true, deeper meaning of their words? Winter was always coming. Always.

A sliver of a pallid, trembling moon slipped from behind the clouds. Standing at the entrance of one of the caves with Tordmund and a few other men at his back, Jon heard something like cracking of ice resounding in the wind. His hand tightened on the pummel of Longclaw.

After everything he had been through, he never thought anything could shock him or horrify him. Yet, as always, life found a way of surprising him.

Giant, ice like spiders with their head covered in bright blue eyes waddled into view. Three, four, five, six, seven of them. On their backs rode beings that looked like men chiseled out of ice: tall, slender and oddly, inhumanly beautiful. As the moon rays fell upon them, Jon noticed they were wearing armor and the skin of their face was even paler than he had first thought: it looked like shiny, white milk. They carried large swords that seemed carved from bright crystal. Their eyes glowed in the dark and they were just as blue and as otherworldly as he remembered from the White Walkers. It took Jon a few minutes to realize that the ice cracking noise he was hearing from them was actually their speech. It sounded different from the sharp shrieks of the White Walkers. It sounded frighteningly like a language.

At his back, Jon could feel Tordmund’s breath pick up. Fear passed like a cold current from man to man. One of the ice beings poked at the remnants of a fire with his sword. It was only a matter of time until they realized that the people who had camped there couldn’t have gone far. He calculated fast. These seven seemed to be the only ones here. They could take them out and then make a run for the Wall. He tried not to think of the three long horn blows and what might await them at the Wall. One emergency at a time.

He turned to Tordmund and whispered to him a quick instruction which then other man relayed further. Jon could only hope these new White Walkers or whatever they were had the same vulnerabilities as those repelled at Winterfell. Many of the Wildlings were still carrying dragonglass weapons from that battle. The Free Folk were not ones to give back any sort of weaponry.

_I am the watcher on the walls,_ he thought. _I am the shield that guards the realm of men_.

He pulled his sword and charged.

# # #

The streets of New Valyria were odd: the stone was almost black and seemed fused together as if by fire and gleamed like dragonstone. There was not a single crack in it and it was clean, cleaner than Arya had seen in any city. Separating the street itself from the wide sidewalks was a narrow valley cut into the stone. On each side of the vale the stone was slightly lighter in color. She had never seen streets as clean as these in her life. Stranger still, she had never witnessed anyone empty their chamber pots into the street, either.

She had been in the city for almost a day and a night now and she was no closer to being able to leave than when she had arrived. She didn’t have enough gold to buy supplies for the trip to Westeros and the news she had heard about home were distressing to say the least. Winter was raging in the former Seven Kingdoms and it had brought famine and new civil wars. Some of her sailors had deserted her to find work on the many Essosi ships that cluttered the harbor.

Arya squatted down on a street corner intent on relieving herself when a woman’s voice yelled at her to stop. The woman was about Arya’s age with bronze skin and deep, almond like eyes.

“No,” she told Arya waving her hands frantically as she ran towards her. “You cannot do this in the streets. If the Reeves see you, you’ll be fined three pieces of silver.”

“Where am I supposed to go then?” Arya asked. Even in Braavos people relieved themselves on street corners when the need struck them. She had never heard of a city where it was forbidden and she had to wonder what weird kind of tyranny Daenerys Targaryen had instilled in her New Valyria.

“Come, I’ll show you to a public latrine,” the woman replied and indicated with a hand the direction in which they should go.

“What’s a public latrine?”

“A place where people go to shit and piss” the other woman replied matter-of-factly. “I’m Laena. What’s your name?”

“Cat,” Arya said curtly.

“You’re a foreigner, aren’t you? I can see by your dress. Where are you from?”

“Westeros,” Arya answered guardedly as they walked. Everyone was oddly friendly here and it put her on edge.

“Oh.” The woman looked at her with pity then. “Are you a refugee? I heard news of a terrible famine there. They say people cross the Narrow Sea in boats to get to our shores and many die on the way Have you come to settle to New Valyria? If you work for the construction of the city, you will get coin and a house for free by the grace of Mhysa. The work is not hard. Mhysa uses dragonfire and magic to fuse the stone together so you don’t have to cut it. My husband and I work in the harbor and we got a very nice house for it. We even got a potted lemon tree two moons ago as a thank you for our efforts.”

“Why a potted lemon tree?” Arya wanted to know, her curiosity getting the better of her.

“It’s the tree of Mhysa. All the best workers get one. It’s on her banner. That and the dragons, of course.” She pointed to the many small black banners with the three-headed red dragon poised above a lemon tree hanging from nearly every window on the street. It was something Arya had noted before: aside from the wide, beautifully made banners flying over the harbor, many windows in town had smaller, crudely crafted, visibly home made ones. Most of the doors were painted bright red and above them there were carvings of three-headed dragons or lemon trees or both.

“Does the Dragon Queen make you fly her banners?”

The other woman laughed. “Of course not. We hang them to show our gratitude to Mhysa. We owe her our freedom and our homes.”

“You call her Mhysa. Why?”

Her companion didn’t answer at first. She instead paused to wave at a woman with a wicker basket on her head.

“Fire and blood,” the newcomer said.

“For the Dawn,” replied the woman walking with area. “Are you coming from the market?”

“Yes, I head the most wonderful news. Ships came in from Lorath this morning. They brought litchi and a singer who has never been to New Valyria before. She will sing in the Square of Missandei the Wise tonight.”

“Thank you.” Then she turned to Arya. “You should come too. Mhysa invites singers, actors, mummers and poets from all over Essos to entertain her people. She says it’s not only the fighting pits that bring enjoyment. What were you asking? Oh, about Mhysa…. It’s an old Ghiscari word. It means mother. Many in the Kingdom of the Rising Son call our Queen that. Anyhow, here we are,” she finished indicating a long slab of limestone with round holes in it and a bench carved on its lower side. “Do you think you’ll need help with the water?”

“Why use would a latrine have for water?” Arya inquired.

Her companion giggled. “Come, I’ll show you. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it. By the way, I live on the street corner where… well, where I found you. You can come visit me once you settled.”

“Shut up,” Arya snapped.

Laena’s eyes widened and her mouth opened again to ask what was happening. Apparently nothing shut her up.

The latrine was located in a round gap at the crossroads of several street. Out of the corner of her eyes she saw uniformed men filter closer with far too much speed and grace to be just passing by. She saw the weapons hidden beneath their sand-colored capes in their gait. It was a dead-end and she was surrounded.

Arya drew Needle and grabbed Laena, placing the sword at her throat. The woman screamed.

“One more step and I’ll kill her,” she threatened in High Valeryan.

Wordlessly the men crept closer. Those who were indeed merely passing by and even a few people currently using the latrine scurried away quickly.

A shadow jumped from the roof of a nearby building. The silhouette was petite and slim, clearly belonging to a woman, draped in a dark blue cape, the face obscured by a gleaming red mask.

“Let her go,” a familiar, imperious voice ordered.

The shadow had amethyst eyes.

Arya hesitated for the briefest of moments. It was one thing to know a threat to her family lived and another to witness the walking, talking evidence of it.

The shadow flitted through the air with a speed no practitioner of water dancing could hope to match. Later Arya would realize that no amount of hesitation could account for the way Needle had frozen in her grip, refusing to move. The Dragon Queen was whispering low under her breath but Arya couldn’t make out what she was saying. Golden rings formed in those purple orbs right before they turned to an inky black.

Fingers wrapped in sinewy leather gripped Arya’s right wrist drawing the sword away from Laena’s neck.

“Run,” the Queen commanded out loud.

Laena scampered away without looking back.

Arya wrenched her hand free and aimed Needle at the Dragon Queen’s throat. A large, heavy looking sword came up and parried Arya’s blow. The sword was big, bigger than Ice, possibly the biggest sword Arya had ever seen. Then it turned into a knotted swirl of flames, the heat of the steel of Needle coming in contact with live fire fast seeping into Arya’s skin.

The fight didn’t have time to erupt, however, for Arya found herself lifted by the scruff of her neck just as the rest of the men converged on her. Arya wiped her head around and found herself staring into the terrifyingly large face, nut brown face of a man who was tall enough to lift her several good feet into the air. He grinned at her with gaped teeth. Arya slashed at him and Needle broke into the skin of an arm that might as well have been a tree trunk. A thick tree trunk.

“Belwas, I want her alive,” the Queen warned.

The giant pursed his lips in what might have been a pout, disarmed Arya with an ease that embarrassed her and dropped her down to the rest of the men. A black hood was thrust on her head. She squirmed and kicked and cursed in both the common tongue and Valeryan but it did her no good. They were too many and managed to bind her rapidly.

# # #

_Then_

“Your Grace.”

The voice was familiar. Dany lowered Lightbringer and turned to see a shadow with the face of a woman bow before her.

“Quaithe,” Dany murmured.

“You have come to pass beyond the Shadow.”

“I died,” Dany answered dully.

“You come from Stygai,” Quaithe said in a voice heavy with awe and bowed again all the way to the ground.

“Of course she did, Quaithe. Where else would she find Lightbringer?”

Another shadow, this one tinged with fire, slipped closer and bowed too. Dany recognized both the voice and her features.

“Melisandre,” Danny muttered. “I thought you had died.”

Melisandre gained human shape but she did not look like young and beautiful Red Woman Dany recalled. She now appeared old enough to have been born centuries ago. A crimson cape wrapped around her body reminiscent of the red dresses Dany remembered her wearing.

“Across vast eons even death might die,” Melisandre said enigmatically.

“Do not mind, Melisandre, My Queen,” Quaithe interjected. “She is often wrong and loathe to admit it. Time has taught her no humility. You have nothing to fear here. You are amongst your kin.”

Dany nodded. “I know. I saw.”

“What was it that you saw?” Quaithe asked.

“The truth,” Dany replied. “I saw the light beyond the Shadow.”

“Come, you must be famished.”

“More like parched.”

“Do not drink from the River Ash,” Quaithe cautioned. “We can withstand it but you might not.” She called out to someone in a language Dany had never heard before. One of the men with fish like features handed Dany a skin filled with water.

Dany drank gratefully. “Would you thank him for me?”

Quaithe and the man spoke briefly. “He said he is thankful to have been of service to the Goddess-on-Earth. That we would only pray for your protection in return.”

“I’m not a goddess.”

“Nobody living ever came back from Stygai. Even shadow binders fear it. I fear it. But you did. You entered dead and came back alive. And you are a dragonrider. You are as close to a Goddess-on-Earth as we have seen in a long time. As close as we shall see for millennia to come.”

Dany smiled uneasily at the man who bowed all the way to the ground then left.

“What language was that?” Dany asked, eager to change the subject. “It’s beautiful.”

It was! Melodic and eerie with breathy quality to it.

“It is the Language of the Dawn. We can teach you, if you wish. We can teach you many things. We can teach you to speak to the shadow inside you.”

“Can you teach me to speak to the fire inside me too?” Dany inquired, filled with sudden hope. If she could control the fire, perhaps there would be no more burnt down cities in her future.

“Dragons speak to the fire inside you, My Queen.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for the amazing feedback, insights and encouragements. I am grateful for it all. I'm sorry I often lack the time to respond to each and every one of you. I am glad to have such astute and intelligent readers. Give yourself a hand. :)
> 
> The latrines as described in this chapter and a sewer system were quite common in the cities of the Roman Empire. In the Middle Ages, on which the current world of Ice and Fire is based, people relieved themselves and poured the contents of their pots onto the streets. You can guess which one worked better for public health.


	5. Chapter 5

“The hour that burst the spirit's sleep...” ― **Saul Bellow,** **Henderson the Rain King**

_Now_

Jon slipped through the snow silent as cat prowling the shadows. Tormund and the best Wildlings fighters came with him. It was colder than when they had gone up to the peaks. Their breath turned to fine mist in the pale moonlight. The same rays glittered off their unwelcome guests. Their armor shifted with it like the waters of a treacherous lake. It traveled from glimmering white to black to moss green then to white again. Like dragon scales in the sun, he thought with shudder and a pang. There were no dragons that could come to their aid now. No Dragon Queen with her many armies. If the White Walkers had returned or if something worse had come for the living, they would stand alone. _And die_ , whispered a voice from deep within his consciousness.

The newcomers turned as one and stepped closer, their movements making no sound as they walked on the thick coating of snow. Their eyes were burning like living blue flames in the night. One of them said something in that alien language that sounded like splitting ice. It sounded almost triumphant. Jon raised his sword. Tormund yelled and the Wildlings charged. The enemy’s sword seemed even slimmer up closer, long and narrow, and translucent in the moonlight. It clashed with Jon’s with an odd, whining sound that he did not recall from his previous fights with the White Walkers.

They danced as they thought fluidly and gracefully, the one Jon had engaged flitting rapidly and expertly as he dodged the man’s precise blows. His gaunt face seemed carved from ice, its cheekbones so prominent they appeared to be sharp as knives. No expression troubled that face. No sign of exertion could be perceived in the fighter. Jon heard the scream of a Wildling and then another as the people began to fall while they enemy still stood. Jon pressed, increasing the force of his strikes, ducking out of the reach of his adversary’s sword at the very last moment.

Longclaw hit the armored stomach. The Valyrian steel creaked and complained but held. Jon saw his reflections in the armor that glittered like a finely polished mirror. Something flickered in those bright blue eyes: recognition. A thought sparked at the edge of Jon’s mind but he pushed it away for later. It would not do to get distracted in the middle of a fight. Longclaw swished up, very nearly missing the other sword, and slashed the creature into the neck. It fell with the familiar sound of breaking ice and melted into the snow below as if it never existed.

Jon turned to the next one, his lungs burning with effort just as the rush of the battle overtook him, propelling him forward as he slid easily into the well honed moves and responses. The second one was easier. He was already learning their rhythm and style of fighting but the third one was harder. It occurred to Jon that they were learning too and that thought was more chilling than anything else. He didn’t remember such a behavior from the White Walkers he knew.

The rush only left him when they were all gone. He hadn’t killed all of them himself, just four out of seven. But eleven of the Wildlings were dead too. An instant later Jon realized the cold felt as if it was trying to eat through his face. There was a bit of wind too and it was even crueler.

“We need to burn the bodies,” Tormund whispered, the heft of something much like fear in his voice.

Jon nodded. “Aye, and we need to be quick about it.”

He helped as they pushed the dead towards one of the former hearths and lit them on fire.

“What now?” Tormund wished to know.

In the moonlight Jon saw more fear on the faces looking to him for guidance.

“We head for the Wall.”

“The horn blew from the Wall,” Tormund reminded him. “What if they are already there?”

“They may be but we have no choice, either. We can’t go farther North towards the Lands of Always Winter. Whatever these are, White Walkers or something else, I think that’s where they came from.”

The thought from during the fight returned to niggle at him. The first one he had slain had recognized something about Longclaw: possibly the Valyrian steel. Jon had never observed such a behavior in a White Walker before or perhaps it had simply slipped his notice. He had always assumed it was a happy coincidence that the steel forged in the Old Valyria killed White Walkers and wights. The previous Long Night had been thousands of years before, possibly eight thousands, but Valyria and its steel were recent than that. If that were true, then how come this new kind of White Walkers had recognized Valyrian steel? Was the date of the first Long Night wrong or was Valyrian steel perhaps older than Valyria?

* * *

_Then_

It seemed the curse of Mirri Maz Duur had a much deeper hold on her than she had thought. The godswife’s word rang in Dany’s ears. What was life when everything was gone? She sat huddled on a ledge of rock staring at the tall stalks of ghost grass shining white in the distance. She could hear the sounds of the village not far from her. The Shadowmen carved dwelling directly into the rock of the valleys. Among them they had the same misshapen statues that had once terrified her in Vaes Dothrak. They resembled those she had seen in Stygai and she guessed they were among the few things left of the great, long-lost civilization that had built both Stygai and Asshai. The Shadowmen were not all fish like but they all possessed the same pale, sun starved skin. Most covered it in tattoos. Their faces, however, all had some kind of deformity. It did not bother her and their statues no longer frightened her. In fact, she had felt no fear since leaving Stygai.

What else did she have to fear? She had lost everything. She had lost Jorah, Missandei, the Dothraki, the Unsullied, Westeros and quite possibly the cities of the former Slaver’s Bay too. Just as she had lost Drogo and her unborn baby before. She had lost her family and her country even as she was being born. And now the man she loved had killed her. Perhaps she had lost her mind too. Perhaps she was just as mad as her father and she had hallucinated everything she had seen in Stygai. She had even lost the dream of home, not that was ever a possibility for her. She saw that now. Westeros was not her home and could have never become it, either. She was too Essosi for it and too Westerosi for Essor. She was a stranger wherever she went. She felt a twinge of anger at Drogon. Why had he not left her to the clutches of death?

She heard the flapping of wings above her and then Drogon dropped a kind of wild goat at her feet. He kept bringing her animals from beyond the Shadow Lands but she didn’t have much of an appetite these days. Maybe it was another side-effect of dying.The dragon was hovering in the air next to her, the ledge too narrow for the two of them. He blew fire and roasted his hunt but the smell only served to turn her stomach.

“I’m not hungry, Drogon,” she muttered.

He nudged at her with his muzzle but she pushed him away. “Let me be. I told you I’m not hungry.”

The dragon inched his kill closer to her. It lodged something and sent it rolling closer to her feet. She knew what it was: the dagger Jon had used to stab her through the heart. She had found it in her clothes after she had left Stygai. It still had the flakes of her dry blood on it. She sometimes took it out and stared at it for hours. She jolted to her feet and started to keen, the sound echoing off the surrounding rock. There was movement from the direction of the village. Torches lit the night as its twisted and malformed inhabitants hurried towards her, the light of the flame casting odd shadows on their faces. A griffin landed next to her and then a chimera—a hideous amalgamation of man and beast—with leathery wings that resembled those of a giant bat. Drogon snarled at them. But the griffin kept its distance practically hiding behind Dany from Drogon, while the chimera’s large, bleary eyes were troubled rather than menacing.

Dany stared around her and it took her a moment to realize her vision was blurry from tears she could not recall shedding. The first villagers to arrive spoke to her in that language she did not yet know. If only the Westerosi who had called her a foreign whore could see now… consorting with monsters. She imagined Jon’s disgust, Sansa Stark’s dainty displeasure, Tyrion’s and Samwell Tarly’s horror, the Northerns’ disgruntled murmurs. But what if they were right? What if she was truly a monster? Perhaps here, where no sane man dared venture, among shadows and these people that were as broken as her, she would be at home. Monsters recognized their own kind and they had flocked to her the moment she had stepped outside of Stygai. Perhaps that was why Drogon had brought her here. He had brought her home.

She patted Drogon’s muzzle apologetically and took a piece of meat from the goat. Then she gestured to the villagers and the other creatures who had come that they should share in her bounty. They needed no further enticement and the carcass was picked clean with alarming speed.

As she was chewing on the warm meat, her mind wondered to what the Dreamer had shown her in Stygai. The truth! She shrugged it off. The rest of the world would have to solve its own problems for once. After all, what had it ever done for her?

# # #

Dany dipped her fingers into the roaring fire and drew out the flame arranging it until it resembled the face of one of the village children who were sitting around with her. They laughed and she did it again for another one of them—a girl no older than seven who had only one eye and fish gills behind her ears. She smiled when Dany represented her too in the fire. Dany gritted her teeth pushing the sound of bells and the stab of guilt out of her mind. It had proven surprisingly easy to learn how to sing to the shadow inside her as Quaithe called it.

“Magic has never left the Shadows… or Asshai, for that matter, not even when it was fading from the rest of the world,” Quaithe had explained. “There has always been magic here. Magic and the stirring of dragons.”

Dany had found that if she prickled her finger and added just a few drops of blood to the fire she could even more impressing things than drawing with flames. Blood magic still sat uneasy with Dany, though.

“Magic is a tool,” Quaithe had said when Dany had come to her with her misgivings. “Like a knife. A knife can cut through a turnip or stab a man to death. It is all a matter of what you do with it. Same with magic, even blood magic.”

A woman appeared and called two of the children away before inviting Dany to dine with her family later. Dany thanked her and promised to come. The children were all malformed in some way just like their parents but otherwise just as lively and healthy like any children. They didn’t seem to notice the oddity of their life because they didn’t know anything else. There were no children further down the Ash River in Asshai but the Shadowmen had children just like everyone else.

The Shadowmen reminded her a little of the Dothraki. Unlike the mages and shadowbinders that ventured up the river from Asshai, the Shadowmen crossed the mountains to Yi Ti to reave. They took no slaves, however, only food, fresh water and gold and gems to trade with the merchant ships that came to Asshai. Whenever they went outside the Shadow, they wore the red lacquer mask they were famous for.

“My father is going to Asshai in a fortnight,” one of the older boys told her.

The Shadowmen never allowed their children outside the villagers until they were old enough to fight and reave. No magic was forbidden in Asshai and human sacrifices were routine there so the Shadowmen did not want any of the sorcerers there stealing their children for their dark purposes.

“You can go with him and the others,” the boy continued.

Dany shook her head. She had a lifetime of experience running from assassins from Westeros. She doubted anyone would come search for her in a place like the Shadow Lands. The mere reputation of Stygai protected her. And if they did, she had Drogon and other dragons. It wasn’t like it was possible to send an army of any kind up those mountains, anyway. She was safe. Safer than she had been anywhere else before. But venturing into Asshai could be problematic. It was too out in the open. What if a merchant recognized her?

“You can wear a red mask like the rest of us,” the boy added after some time.

# # #

_Now_

Dany replaced the red mask in her weapons’ chest, carefully setting it down. There was something else there too, something she had not taken out in a years: the dagger that had pierced her heart. There were still dried, dark red flakes of her blood on it. She closed the chest with a soft click then got up and went to meet her guest.

# # #

Arya’s hood was removed but instead of finding herself in a dungeon she discovered she was in a kind of a small dining room with strange, ruddy walls. Light spilled generously from the elongated windows the glass of which was spun in a myriad of colors that cast rainbow rays on the floor. The long table before Arya was covered by platters of food. There was a plain deep blue plate before her and a tall glass cup but no eating implements. Her feet were tied to her chair but her hands were free. There were also two Unsullied posted on each side of the door. She tried getting their attention several times but with no success.

Daenerys Targaryen stepped in not long after Arya’s hood was taken off. She wore black leathers styled to look like dragon scales and her hair was braided in a similar fashion to one she had used the last time Arya had seen her. Those ethereal, violet eyes were cold, calculating, the look of a predator about to pounce. Other than that, she appeared more or less the same as Arya remembered her: only thinner which served to make her seem even tinier. Her skin had a healthy alabaster glow that matched the silver of her hair. Her beauty seemed sharper like a knife that had been honed until it could cut through metal. There was something different about the way she moved too: she slid like a cat, silent, sinewy and deadly. Arya had always read her like a killer but now she could see she had become a trained killer too. Wonderful, just wonderful!

“Good morning, Lady Stark.”

Arya threw her place at her but the other woman dodged it with ease.

“I’m not a lady.”

“You are by birth,” Daenerys said airily, seemingly unfazed by Arya’s gesture, and took a seat across the table from Arya. “Please, eat. I assure you nothing here is poisoned.”

“Just like you are a queen by birth,” Arya retorted skewering her with a challenging gaze.

Daenerys’ smile was cool and precise like a razor. “Not on this continent. You may find it hard to believe but I do not wish to be a queen on yours. By birth or by any other way.” She snatched a few figs and a mound of goat cheese from one of the platters and placed them on her plate before adding some of the steaming, black sausage and a piece of flat bread. “I should warn you that the jerky is horse. It is something of an acquired taste. I struggled with it at first too. The Dothraki blood pie, however, is lovely, though it does have horse in it too.”

“Am I supposed to eat with my hands?” Arya asked.

“This far East everybody does. They believe knives and other sharp objects are weapons and do not belong at the table.”

“Are you trying to fatten me before you feed me to your dragons?”

Daenerys ate her fig. “No, I’m trying to break my fast.” She poured some water into her glass cup. “I am afraid I no longer imbibe but if you would like some wine or ale, I can have some brought for you.”

“I don’t want anything from you,” Arya spat. “You’re a killer.”

“As are you.”

“At least, I didn’t kill innocent women and children. You burnt the entire King’s Landing to the ground.”

This got the queen’s attention. Those amethyst eyes met Arya’s. The look in them was complicated, hard to read. “I did. The fact that I did is atrocious and inexcusable. Though I do have to wonder how you would reflect on your family killing millions, the vast majority of them innocent, as we speak.”

“You’re lying.”

“I do not. Besides, it is easily verifiable. Your sister is Queen in the North while your brother, Brandon, rules over the Six Kingdoms. All seven of them are bankrupt, their granaries empty, while winter and starvation ravage the land.”

“You did this,” Arya ground out. “You starved them.”

“I assure you I did not. I have not sent them any free food either but that is only because I don’t have any to spare. Winter has come to Essos too. It might not be cold, not yet anyway, but the days grow shorter every moon. Perhaps one day the sun will not rise for years. What then? We need to fill our granaries while there is still a harvest to be had.”

Arya stared at her incredulously. She was mad. She had to be raving and if not, then she had to be lying.

Daenerys drank some water then began to leaf at Arya’s leather bound travel book. “You seem to have taken quite an interesting journey. So everything about Sothoryos is true… and worse.”

Arya stared at the queen’s slim, pale fingers turning the pages. “What have you done with my crew?”

“Not a thing. I was curious about what you were doing to New Valyria so I had my people go through your things while the sailors on your ship were in the city. They thought this would be of interest to me and it is. There has not been recent news of Sothoryos since….” She stopped, dropping the piece of bread on her plate, her face going even whiter than it already was. “The world is around,” she said softly then frowned her eyes going round with horror. “The world is round,” she repeated and leaned back in her chair with a high back tapered by a golden cushion. She jerked up so fast she hit the table and ran out of the room before Arya could ask anything else.

The queen came back running a moment later. She pushed her place and cup aside and unfurled the scroll she was carrying.

“Aye, the world is round,” Arya confirmed. “What of it? Does it hinder your plans for the conquest of it?”

Daenerys ignored Arya as she fiddled with what Arya realized was a map trying to twist it to make it round. Her scowl of frustration deepening, she ripped the parchment in two.

Arya shrugged and stole a peach from one of the platters. She might as well eat for it seemed Daenerys Targaryen was even madder than it had been previously thought.

Daenerys arranged the two pieces of the map on top of each other, her eyes glued to it, her pallor deepening with each breath she took.

“The world is round,” she said again.

TBC


	6. Chapter 6

You can't live without the fire  
It's the heat that makes you strong  
'Cause you're born to live and fight it all the way  
You can’t hide what lies inside you  
It's the only thing you know  
You're embracing that, never walk away  
Don't walk away.

(Within Temptation, _Iron_ )

_Now_

The world was round. That single thought rolled like a copper coin in Dany’s head. Round, the world was round. And she was nowhere near ready. If the world was round, then somewhere beyond the Grey Waste Essos and Westeros met or were separated by a body of water that was soon to freeze if it hadn’t already. That if the Grey Waste wasn’t in actuality the Lands of Always Winter. There was not a notion in the entire world that could be more sobering than that. And she was nowhere near ready. She thought she had years, a decade even. No matter, that world was round and scowling at a map would not suddenly flatten it.

“I apologize for the interruption,” Daario said poking his head in, his words displaying an uncharacteristic amount of diplomacy. Something was afoot. “My Queen, there is a situation that requires your attention.”

“If you’ll excuse me,” Dany told Arya Stark absently then quickly slid out after Daario.

“What is it?” she asked once they were in corridor.

“There was a raven from Westeros. There’s been another rebellion.”

“Of course there has. They have them every week.”

Daario snickered. “House Hightower rebelled against the sellsword that was appointed by the new king as Lord of their region and wrestled control of it from reach.”

“That region is the Reach. It’s the most fertile area in the entire Seven Kingdoms. They lost their entire food supply in the fight between me and Cersei Lannister in no small part because of me and my dragons, I have to say and not proudly. Still they must have obtained at least two more harvests before the snows set in. If they had to share them with the rest of the kingdoms, especially the North which purports to be independent, the smaller houses would have been unhappy seeing as they would risk starvation themselves in order to feed the rest.” She noted none of what she was saying rang a bell with Daario. “The Arbor in the Reach,” she added with a small smile.

“Oh! Good wines.”

“Lord Hightower must have undoubtedly proclaimed himself King of the Reach.”

Daario grinned, a familial twinkled lighting up his eyes. “No, he did not. He declared for House Targaryen and proclaimed you the rightful Queen of the Seven Kingdoms.”

She frowned.

“What are you thinking?”

“About something our Braavosi friends are fond of telling us: find the money. House Hightower has something else besides food and grain and wine.”

“Money?”

“No, something even better: a bank. The Bank of Oldtown, the only bank in Westeros. When the Iron Bank and Volantenes refused to lend the Six Kingdoms more money, they must have turned to the Bank of Oldtown. Tyrion either borrowed money from them and never paid it back or simply seized their entire gold reserve. But if I become Queen, then the debt of the Six or Seven Kingdoms becomes mine and I can pay. Or they can come complain to me that they have been robbed by their Crown and demand the return of the gold that rightfully belongs to them.”

Daario’s grin widened. “I take back what I said about you and banks. I love how cynical they have made you.”

“Was the raven from House Hightower?”

He handed the small, rolled piece of paper to her. “Yes, from a certain Lord Leyton Hightower. He is sending his second son, Ser Garth Hightower, to New Valyria to bend the knee to you.” She scanned the pompous yet to the point message that the raven had brought her. Lord Leyton was begging her apology that old age had prevented him from making the trip himself, especially as he would have loved to see the wonder of Valyria reborn with his very eyes, and his elder son and heir was busy gathering their bannermen in her name.

“If you take Westeros, please do not reward me with a lordship there,” Daario said seemingly out of nowhere.

Dany smirked. “You need not worry. If I take Westeros, I only plan to make lord and ladies out of my enemies there.”

“A crueler fate than being eaten by your dragons but treason should not go unpunished. Speaking of which, what am I do with your guest that tried to chew her way out through her hood?”

“Put her in a holding cell,” she replied crumpling the message in her fist. Oddly enough, seeing Arya Stark had hurt a lot less than she had imagined. The memory of the massacre of King’s Landing could do her no more harm than it did every day and every night when the bells rang in her nightmares. Time had dulled the heat of anger and hatred as well. If she and the Starks could have kept to their respective corners of the world for the rest of their lives, Dany could have been content. Perhaps as the years would begin to pass, she might even have been able to forget. “Are the emissaries from Qohor still here?”

Daario’s eyes sparked with interest. “So we are going to take Westeros, after all?”

“No, but we are going to Westeros.”

His brow furrowed in confusion. “But not to take it?”

“New Valyria is my home and almost every door in it is red. There are lemon trees everywhere and people smile and wave when I pass by. What need do I have of Westeros?”

# # #

_Then_

Drogon gently laid her down on the side of the mountains next to the sea of undulating ghost grass. Dany slid off the dragon. She pulled Lightbringer off her right hip. In the meager, ash-tinted light that only shone for a few hours around noon, the sword was ruddy. It never got cold instead remaining warm as human flesh. She thought to the legend of how it had come into existence and shuddered. The left side of her chest began to wake. She shook her head to dispel the memory.

_If I look back, I am lost._

She started to slash at the ghost grass. The powder of dried ghost grass sold well among the sorcerers and maegis of Asshai and she didn’t want to survive on the gifts of the Shadowmen forever. She wanted to start earning her keep and reaving would never be a life for her. Besides, she should have liked to eat something else beside the roasted meat of the animals Drogon brought her from beyond the Shadow. As she cut, other dragons began to come and settle next to her. She paused every now and then to pet them. Wild dragons were harder to manage and more unpredictable making Drogon seem complacent by contrast. Still they gravitated towards her and listened to the sound of her voice. When they didn’t, Drogon snapped at them, snarled and put them in their place. That was easy for Drogon to accomplish seeing as he the largest of all of them all.

She had refrained from giving the names so far because whenever the thought occurred to her only names of Targaryen dragons came to mind. Some of the dragons were competing with Drogon for her attention. She had even climbed on the back of a few of them as a form of experiment. The only one of them that was white and another one, fiery red, were more docile and had been fairly easy to ride. She had taught them and others a few commands in Valyrian reasoning she was only doing so in order to be able to communicate with them in some fashion.

She was tying the grass into sheaves when a muzzle pushed at her ankle. This dragon was among the biggest she had seen in the Shadow Lands. His shape reminded her a little of Viserion, though he was larger than him, and that tore at her heart. But this dragon was the color of ash with silvery ribbons on his wings. The slightly angular shape of his wings made him exceptionally fast in flight and he was easy to ride for he had learned the commands faster than any of his brethren. Faster than even Drogon had. Dany suspected it was because he was very intelligent. He was sweet too and friendly and got along well with Drogon. Despite herself, she too to calling him Silverwing in her head.

Wiping at her sweaty brow, she lifted her head to see what had just cast a shadow over her. Another dragon, about as big as Silverwing, towered above her from the rocky peaks. He was gray like Silverwing but the shade was darker similar to that of the clouds on a rainy day and he had stripes of pearly white on his back and the underside of his wide, bony wings. In the right light he could almost appear black like Drogon but that was where the resemblance stopped. He was a difficult mount for he was moody and fidgeted a lot once they were airborne, though,sometimes he could be surprisingly affectionate. His capricious nature didn’t make him off-putting to Dany, on the contrary. When she managed to get him in hand, which was not often, he was steady and sturdy in the air, even not as mobile as Silverwing. Secretly she had taken to calling him Vhagar.

# # #

Dany could have flown into Asshai on dragon back but she did not wish to attract any attention so she chose to navigate the treacherous cleft between the Mountains of Morn down the River Ash instead. The water was black as it always was whenever the light touched it and it hurled itself loudly between the rocky peaks, the roar loud enough to cover the gust of the wind. Like her Shadowmen companions, Dany was wrapped in a long, dark blue cape, its hood pulled over her head, and wore a red lacquer mask. She had fashioned it herself from a piece of bamboo wood the villagers had offered her. She had carved it and painted it then drawn glyphs with spells in red henna on the side that touched her skin. Everyone among the Shadowmen did it for they all had at least a rudimentary understanding of the use of magic. The better they were it, the more complicated the spells were. Dany was proud to say her own spell glyphs were on the complicated side.

Drogon and Silverwing flew above them for a while then departed as Asshai came into view. Dany couldn’t contain a frisson of excited anticipatioon. Asshai was the stuff of myths and legends. And here it was towering over her like the most resplendent view she had ever seen. Quarth would have blushed in shame then cowered in terror. Asshai was unlike anything Dany had ever glimpsed. The architecture reminded her of Stygai but it was even more majestic. The city was black as the darkest of nights as the oily, unpleasant looking black stone drank up all the light bathing the surroudings in a foggy shadows. Still it was beautiful, wild and strange, untamed. It seemed almost an impossibility for a city—a place normally reserved to civilization—to be this savage yet that was the word for Asshai. And Dany drank it all in, her usually maudlin thoughts completely forgotten.

The streets were impeccable, the black stone fused like the most perfect flat surface beneath Dany’s feet. There were no cracks in it. The buildings were massive, monolithic, like giant, square blocks with windows and columns adorning their vast facades. Domes that could most likely house thousands of people inside covered the horizon as far as the eye could see. Then there were the palaces that sprawled up towards the mountains and the bridges over the river that were decorated with spires and gargoyles. In the light of an occasional lantern she spied tall, graceful arcades and porticoes. She couldn’t help but try to picture what it had to have looked like in its glory days under blue skies and bright sunlight. When Ash was alive and filled with fish that weren’t blind and deformed.

_Everything fades_ , she thought, all of the sudden struck by a heavy feeling. _Everyone dies_. Almost everyone she had ever loved had died. Drogo, her unborn son, Jorah, Missandei, Ser Barristan, Rhaegal, Viserion…. And the man she loved—had loved, she wasn’t sure anymore—had killed _her_. This city had been built by the greatest civilization the world had ever known yet nobody even remembered its name anymore. Her own culture, the once mighty Valyria, was gone. Her dynasty that ruled over Westeros for centuries stood at its twilight. So she had to wonder: what was the meaning of it all?

Four, heavy-set men carrying a palanquin draped in black curtains ran past her. Asshai was an ideal place to hide. Everyone there hid their face behind a mask or thick veils and moved about quickly looking furtive and suspicious. Wandering around wrapped in melancholia and unease, Dany fit in perfectly.

The Shadowmen had taught her some of the ululating and strident Asshai speak that had so frightened her when spoken by Mirri Maz Dur. It bore no impact upon her now. It was just another language she spoke.

They passed through a row of tall statues atop high pillars and entered a labyrinthine bazaar. Odd, red-brown lights illuminated the arched structure that was mostly empty. No merchants cried out praising their wares. Only the infrequent hushed whisper could be heard. Still Dany had no trouble finding clients for her sac of powered ghost grass. A tall, lanky figure obscured beneath a veil that all but reached the ground asked her what she was carrying. The veil was so dense she couldn’t see if the man, for the voice seemed to belong to a man, even had a face. Hearing her response, several other masked and veiled silhouettes showed their interest. It took her less than an hour to obtain a surprisingly large amount of gold for her merchandise.

As they were about to leave the bazaar heading for the port she noticed something out of the corner of one eye: two matching, double edged daggers with stout hits on a stand close the exit. She recognized the dragonglass immediately. Asshai was famous for trading it. A lump rose in her throat but she swallowed past it and moved away. She would be the plaything of nobody, regardless of the power they wielded. Whatever came for the rest of the world, she was certain, would not venture into the Shadow Lands. She quickened her pace to catch up with the rest of the party. Lightbringer was unexpectedly heavy on her hip, its warmth seeping through her clothes and into her skin. She reached beneath her cape and closed her fingers around the large, dragon head pommel, squeezing it tight. The scales had tiny shards of both dragonglass and bloodstone embedded into it. The heft of it was comfortable against her palm. The sword felt like being on the back of a flying dragon: both alien and familiar.

The port was bigger than any other Dany had ever seen, the keys so wide they could have easily covered double of Quarth’s largest streets. Beyond them the sea looked like an amorphous mass of gray. Vessels with sails from all over Essos as well as a few from Westeros crowded in the harbor. Dany’s sense of wonder had evaporated. She was no longer curious to explore Asshai. Instead she wanted to return to the Shadow Lands and hide beneath Drogon’s wing and sleep for eons.

“You cannot stay.”

Dany whirled around. Quaithe stood before her, her eyes glittering in the uneasy light of Asshai.

Dany cast a nervous glance to the Westerosi sails in the distance.

“Go on,” Quaithe encouraged Dany’s companions. “We shall find you later.”

Quaithe pulled Dany under a triangular archway.

“Does anyone know I am here?” Dany asked.

“Nobody knows you are here. The greenseer cannot see one the Heart of Darkness has touched. You could be safe here your whole life but still you cannot stay.”

Dany began to get angry. “Why? Because of my duty? Because I am one of the only two dragonriders left in the world? What has the world ever done for me?”

“If you stay, you will change,” Quaithe continued implacably as if Dany had never spoken. “You have already begun. The more you sing to the shadow inside, the more it will grow until there will be nothing left but darkness and fire.”

Dany frowned, confused all of the sudden. “What do you mean? I’ll become like you? Like all the other shadowbinders?”

“You are not but shadow. You are the blood of the dragon, fire made flesh. You will become more than me, more than any shadowbinder. You will live forever, vast as the ages, fire and shadow made one, but your human heart will die. The human heart is conflict but you will only know peace, cold, eternal tranquility.”

“So I won’t feel pain, fury or regret anymore? Why would I not yearn for that?”

“Because you will also no longer feel hope, love, joy, compassion…. You will see the pain of a slave child torn apart to appease the thirst for blood of cruel goods and it will be nothing to you. You will see beauty and you will see despair and none will touch you.”

Dany paused, a tear leaving a hot trail beneath her mask. “How long have I been here?”

“Eight moons.”

She shook her head, though she could not deny that the heavy feeling she had experience since entering Asshai had grown into an unbearable burden. “If I am the Mother of Monsters, then this is my place… my home. I do not wish to go. I do not wish to be a weapon in the war to come. I would rather fade to shadow and fire/Find somebody else…. There is somebody else.”

Quaithe sounded almost sad as she responded. “You are two halves of a whole. One cannot be without the other.”

Dany laughed and it sounded hollow and cold. “The kings and queens play their game of thrones and higher beings, gods or not, play theirs. The wheel spins and spins crushing those on the ground.”

Quaithe didn’t reply merely staring at Dany with eyes that burnt like fiery embers.

TBC


	7. Chapter 7

_Then_

Jon stared into the thick, steady darkness of his tent tent. He rolled out of bed fighting the sudden bout of nausea nausea and padded blindly to a corner to dry heave. There was no light and warmth in there unlike in his dream. And no Dany. Dany was dead. He found his skin and splashed cold water onto his face but it hardly helped. He had drunk quite a bit with Tormund at dinner but clearly it hadn’t been enough. His nights weren’t exactly sleepless but he had found that drink sank him into a deep, dreamless slumber. The dreams were the worst. Because in his dreams she was alive. Every time.

After her death… after he had plunged a dagger into her heart while lovingly kissing her, he had walked around in a daze, being dragged to a cell, having his fate decided for him by people whom he had thought he could trust, the exact same people for whom he had killed _her_. Then came his banishment and the farewell to his family and the long walk to Castle Black. He had been busy and life had dragged him along allowing him to spare but a few thoughts to what had happened in King’s Landing. At the Wall everybody had immediately taken to calling him Lord Command, ignoring that his leaving might as well be desertion, and treating him like the hero of a war he hadn’t won.

Behind his back, however, he caught wind of a few whispered _Kinslayer_ , _Queenslayer_ and _Oathbreaker_. He was reminded the Ned Stark’s disgust for Jaime Lannister even if the man had killed a mad tyrant who had murdered his brother and father in an abominable way. Jaime Lannister had broken his oath and killed his king and that was unforgivable for the good and honorable Ned Stark. Jon couldn’t help but wonder what the only father he had known would think of him now. Would he be ashamed? Would he speak of him with same contempt in which he had held Jaime Lannister? He was afraid of considering an answer.

Tyrion had said to ask him again in ten years if killing Dany was right but it had only been a few months until doubt began to gnaw at Jon. His nights grew restless and his food started to taste like ashes in his mouth. In the morning his eyes were sunken and blood-shot eyes and the look in them was as haunted as he felt. It didn’t help that he had no purpose on the partially collapsed Wall anymore. With peace with the Free Folk and the White Walkers gone, there wasn’t even a reason for him to preoccupy himself with rebuilding. He did his best to let the few remaining members of the Night’s Watch out of their oaths and go find a better life elsewhere. A couple of old men decided they would rather stay at Castle Black for it was the home they knew and he let the keep in their hands before going with Tormund and the Wildlings north of the Wall.

Through it all the doubt grew until it became a living thing inside him howling and tearing at his flesh. He couldn’t tell anyone. Most days he couldn’t even tell himself. The more time passed, the worse it got. Nobody expected him to grieve. Not the Wildlings, not Tormund and not his family and not Tyrion. In fact, the moment he was finished doing their dirty work for them, they couldn’t get rid of him fast enough. His claim to the throne, unwanted as it was, sat like a thorn in the side of the new king and queen and their trusted advisers. And the thing inside him rose and rose and threatened to take him over. It was devouring him whole, ripping at his insides and biting while he screamed in pain. Some nights literally. On those nights the dreams became unbearable because then he found another way, a million solutions that had never occurred to him on the spot sprang from his sleep. King’s Landing didn’t burn. Dany didn’t collapse. On those nights she saved her. And she was happy and smiling at him and telling him how much she loved him and he told her he loved her too. And then he woke to the sound of his own screams. That was why he had begun to drink with his dinner. Fortunately, the wildlings never lacked for strong stuff that rendered him positively comatose.

He sat atop his bedding scrubbing at the side of his face. The creature inside him rattled, snipping, howling for him to give into despair. He couldn’t. The Free Folk were looking to him to lead them and the winter was proving particularly vicious and dark. If he closed his eyes now, he would see her. But not as he wanted to, not as he often dreamt of her: vibrant and alive and oh, so mesmerizing, but pale and trembling in his arms as she drew her last breath, a tickle of blood running from her parted lips that had not quite formed around the word _why_. He had to wonder something too. Why hadn’t Drogon burnt him instead of the Iron Throne? He had no answer to that but in his darkest moments, when desperation got the better of him, he wished the dragon had turned him to ash. Now that would have been right! And it made sense: they were the last Targaryens left in the world. They should have died together.

_A Targaryen alone in the world is a terrible thing_.

Maester Aemon’s voice rang from his memory fraught with implications he had failed to grasp back then. The Targaryens were the last of the great Valyrian civilization. The only thing that remained of it. A whole had died with Daenerys. A whole world would die with him. Bitterness and regret seeped into him. Despite that, he didn’t feel like a Targaryen. He had been raised a wolf of the North, a Stark, the motherless son of Ned Stark. Rhaegar Targaryen and Lyanna Stark were abstracts to him. They didn’t feel like his parents. It was of Ned Stark that he thought when he wondered what his father would think of what he had become. Queenslayer, Oathbreaker, Kinslayer… everything Ned Stark loathed the most. Even if his family had not turned his back on him, he still would have never been able to live south of the Wall. As much as everyone had feared and detested Daenerys and the Targaryens, they still would have judged him harshly for at least one if not all of the three. After all, nobody had mourned the MadKing but they still had spat on the man who had rid them of him.

# # #

The nights in the Shadow Lands were cold and wet with the sea breeze though the mountain winds often turned the air into a dry, bone-deep chill. Though the cold had never been her friend, she slept fairly comfortably wrapped in Drogon’s wing. Dragons were warm to the touch, warmer than people. Besides, she loved the comfort of having her son so near. She didn’t need any dwelling. Drogon was enough.

The sound of bells had woken her up. They rang in her dreams every night together with the cries of the those burning. Quaithe was wrong. She couldn’t return among people. This was where she belonged. She dug her nails into her palms. Wherever she went, people died. The last time it had been innocent men, women and children… small children. A whole city she had burnt. In eight moons no Shadowman had been killed because of her. Yes, this was where she belonged.

She cuddled against Drogon burying her face into his scales. The dragon sighed. She shut her eyes again accepting the familiar penance of her nightmares. It was no more than she deserved. The Queen of Ashes. Blue eyes met her in the darkness behind her closed lids. First in the faces of White Walkers then in far more human and thus far more terrifying ones of the Others. Nobody knew they were coming. The few aware of the White Walkers invasion believed it to be over. One battle for a castle during one night. How silly was that? The first War for the Dawn had lasted a generation!

She remembered hearing about the oath of the Night’s Watch when she had been at Winterfell.

There was no watcher on the wall, no shield to guard the realms of men and the only sword in the darkness was on her hip. No! She was the weapon. Before her the Targaryens had been trying to hatch dragons for over a century with nothing to show for their efforts. The attempt at Summerhall had ended in a conflagration that had nearly killed her entire line. She was unburt though most in her family were not. There was magic in her blood, so much of it that it effortlessly blended shadowbinding with fire. She was born and reborn for one reason and one reason only: to be a weapon in the greatest war of the past eight thousand years.

It was not a pleasant thought. She was not born to have a home, to be happy, to love and be loved in return, to build a beautiful kingdom populated with beautiful maids, fat man and many children waving and smiling as she passed by. She wasn’t born to be the queen of Westeros, to restore the Targaryen dynasty or to free slaves. She was born to be fashioned in pain, suffering and death until she became the perfect weapon just like the steel of blades was forged in fire.

If she stayed in the Shadow, far more than she had killed in King’s Landing would die. Every man, woman and child in Westeros, that was for certain. Perhaps every man, woman and child in the world. What was her suffering compared to that? What was she compared to that? What were all the kings and queens who had ever lived compared to that? How mighty the empire that had built Asshai had to have been. Yet nobody even remembered what its people were called? Where was the powerful Valyrian Freehold? Where was her own dynasty? Dust and half forgotten memory, that was all they were. She understood the dark thought she had entertained in Asshai better now.

One life, one possibility for peace and home, for the entire world. It seemed like such a bargain.

“Night gathers,” she murmured in High Valyrian, as her eyes opened and her fingers tightened on the pommel of Lightbringer. She couldn’t promise not to have children and seek crowns. The line of the dragonriders had no continue, regardless of her personal feelings towards Jon, and a kingdom would be needed as a power base of attack. “And now my… fight begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall live and die at my post. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the shield that guards the realms of men.”

She patted Drogon scales and slid from under his wing and off him. She always kept a torch nearby. Daylight was treacherous in the Shadow. Drogon lit the torch for her. She needed to think. There was a cave just outside the village where the Shadowmen kept things taken from Yi Ti that they could not eat, drink or sell. She had seen many useless trinkets there but also a few books, some of them translated into High Valyrian. Her single-minded focus on Westeros had served her poorly in the past. She needed to change the way she thought. The civilizations in Essos were far older than those in the West. There had been no writing in Westeros at the time of the Long Night but the same did not need to be true of Essos. Who knew what long-forgotten information she could discover here?

She couldn’t prepare for a war by hiding in the shadow or by living hidden and meekly like a commoner. Commoners had no armies. True, she had dragons but her recent experiences had taught her they did not suffice. She needed to gather armies again, to learn more about how use dragons in a fight and build a kingdom that was not only strong enough to lead the fight but that could also store food for when the darkness overtook the world and nothing would grow anymore. A kingdom strong enough to lead the reconstruction when the Dawn finally came again. And the Dawn would come because what good was a queen if she didn’t protect those who couldn’t protect themselves? And she would be a queen again. A queen and khaleesi capable of fighting as well as any khal could. Her hair was growing again and she would earn new braids soon enough. Her ancestors had built a great empire in a few years once they had magic and dragons, after all.

As her torch cast dark golden shadows on the uneven walls of the cave, a memory slithered to the forefront of her mind. Jon telling her of the alliance between the First Men and the Children of the Forest. A sharp pang traveled through her. His voice resounded in her ears heavy with his northern drawl. She squeezed the fingers of her free hand until they ached. She had thought she had loved Drogo and she had thought her heart too scorched and emptied after him to ever fill with love again but Jon had been a strike thunderbolt. She had loved with him a devastating, transforming intensity that had terrified in her fewer and fewer moments of clarity. She was a Targaryen, she was passionate and temperamental but Jon had made a force of nature out of her. Ser Barristan had once described love as slow, sweet poison. Her love for Jon had surely been sweet but its poison had been anything but slow. Nothing had mattered but him. She would have followed him to the ends of the earth and back. She had been worse than a young girl with her first crush. She had wanted the Iron Throne because after Jon’s rejection it seemed like the only thing in the world left to her. Not even losing Jorah, Missandei, so many of her Dothraki and Unsullied and two of her children had sobered her up. All she had seen was him. All she was aspired to was him. And she had been spiraling and losing control ever since that blissful first moon on the boat to the North. When she had lost him, she had been lost as well.

A broken heart atop a dragon was a terrible thing. She needed to get a hold of herself or the sorrow would kill her just as surely his dagger did. But before that there would be many more burning cities in her future. She could never lose control again. She could never let anger and pain get the better of her. Never again! Never again would her heart rule her head.

_If I look back, I am lost…. If I look at him, I am lost._

The light of the torch gleamed off the dark green walls of the cave. She drew closer and touched the stone. The look and feel of it were familiar. It was dragonglass.

_# # #_

_Now_

It was day by the time they had reached Castle Black but they had already seen the worst of it from a distance. As far as the eye could see the Wall was completely gone… fallen. Jon stopped his horse trying to gentle the beast with a gloved hand on his neck. When they left the Fist of the First Men, it had been a relief to find the animals in the valley where they had hidden them but the trek to Castle Back had been difficult. The horses had been spooked and difficult to control. Ghost had whined almost the entire way. And the people were not faring any better. All around him Jon could see fearful and questioning face.

Tormund rose to his side, a deep frown marking his bushy brows. “What do you think, King Crow? Is there anyone alive inside?”

Jon doubted it. “Take a few men and lead the children and their mothers back into the forest.” he instructed authoritatively. “The rest will come with me to Castle Black.”

“How do you think they managed to bring it all down?” Tormund seemed uncharacteristically hesitant. “There was only one undead dragon and we took it down at Winterfell. Where could they have gotten more?”

Jon narrowed his eyes as he turned his head to his old friend. “If you know something now it’s the time to say it,” he said tersely.

Tormund could almost look ashamed. He held up a placating hand. “It’s an old story I heard it from a Thenn around the fire one time. I didn’t pay much attention to it because… well, it’s the fucking Thenns. You can never put much stock in what they’re saying.”

“In case you haven’t noticed, scary stories are true around here.”

Tormund grimaced, his eyes apologetic. “He said that far at sea, where the ice never thaws, not even in summer, there are ice dragons with breath like frozen death.”

Jon’s left hand itched. It wouldn’t be right to punch someone like Tyrion but he ached to do it. About as much as he wanted to punch himself. If there was something other than blackness after death then he was fairly certain it was the sound of Daenerys Targaryen laughing.

# # #

Dany sat at her plain yet wide ebony desk in the study close to the throne room. This one had red walls too but it wasn’t square not round. A glass candle stood in every corner—one black, one green, one purple and one dark red. When she had company, she was careful to keep them unlit. The walls were littered with tall shelves filled with books. There were also chests of scrolls and parchments and a small table with the plans for the ongoing construction of New Valyria. Still she had left room for a potted lemon tree. The ruddy clay pot had carvings of three-headed dragons on it. On her desk she always had plenty of stacks of papers, plain glass ink pots and sharpened feathers. She wrote in ochre tinted red ink as part of her signature.

She was just finishing the message she was inscribing when the two envoys from Qohor arrived. She stood to greet them and they bowed respectfully. From their nervous expressions she could guess she had driven her point across the last time they had spoken. Since they had understood the venomous message, she decided to present them with honey this time. So she smiled pleasantly making certain they saw her Qohor steel, three-headed dragon seal ring—the only piece of jewelry she wore. She had commissioned it as a gesture of good faith after the Unsullied guarding Qohor had slain their masters and opened the city gates to her without fight. Had it truly been only a year since then?

She invited them to sit in the chairs across the desk from her. All the chairs in the room were the same: with tall backs made of ebony and golden and red cushions. The two men sat down with puzzled looks on their faces. Dany slunk back in her seat too.

“As I trust we have put the nonsense of Qohor breaching a royal edict behind us, we shall speak no more of it. I have summoned you here to talk about Qohor’s claim to be the only place left where Valyrian steel is produced.”

“It is not just a claim, Your Grace. The blacksmiths of Qohor possess the ancient secret of Valyrian steel.”

Dany said nothing merely opened one of her desk’s drawers and took out an ornamental dagger she had once received as a gift from Qohor. “The gleam of the steel is the same.” She weighed the blade in her hand. “It’s light like Valyrian steel but there is no wavy pattern in the metal.” She pulled Lightbringer and set it on the desk next to the dagger. The tips of two fingers ran along the tell-tale design in the metal. “I have no doubt you can reforge existing Valyrian steel but your blacksmiths cannot forge new one, no matter how skilled they are. Nobody can because Valyrian steel is forged in dragonfire. Not with sand but with dragonglass and bloodstone powder.”

“Your Grace,” the younger man cried in alarm.

“Your Grace,” the elder man said sedately. “Perhaps Qohor cannot create authentic Valyrian steel but we still have the best blacksmiths in the known world.”

Dany smiled. “I know. This is my I wish to make the blacksmiths of Qohor the formal armorers of the Crown. I wish you to bring this message back to your city: every Unsullied solider will be armed with Valyrian steel blades and spear heads and they will all be made by Qohor and paid for with royal gold. I am the Dragon Queen so I can provide an abundance of dragonfire for the forges. I will send word to Asshai. They are not part of my kingdom for I doubt anyone can hold Asshai but they will not turn away the Sorceress Queen. Their mostly empty city is made entirely of bloodstone. Surely they can spare a few columns for the little powder we need. As for dragonstone, the Mountains of the Morn are made entirely of it.”

“Your proposal is most generous, Your Grace, and though we cannot speak for the city or its blacksmiths, I can assure it will be gratefully accept. But who will mine the dragonstone? Many fear the Shadow.”

“I am not one of the many,” Dany said. “Leave the mining problem to me.”

# # #

Castle Black was empty. Jon and his party found no bodies only the evident marks of a struggle. Torn down chamber doors and blood sprayed on the walls. The fires had died to blinking out embers in the hearths. Only the howling of the wind could be heard in the once animated keep of the Night’s Watch. In the main yard the decapitated bodies of the horses formed a familiar diamond pattern.

Jon stood next to the pattern, Longclaw in hand. He thought of his brothers, of the many he had lost, of the battles they had fought together, of the long nights they had spent keeping watch. He remembered the oath he had taken and broken. And his own death in this very yard. Loss tore at him as the unforgiving winds of winter whipped at his hair. After thousands of years guarding the realm of men from threats beyond the Wall, the Night’s Watch was finally and truly gone. There were no more Watchers on the Wall. And the Wall itself didn’t stand anymore.

TB


	8. Chapter 8

_Now_

Dany prickled the tip of her finger and lit up the green glass candle. Lighting up glass candles was no hardship for her, using them was another matter altogether. The flame rose high, white and bright. She allowed the blood to pool in her palm then wrapped it around the swirl of the candle. She gazed into the flame, repeating the incantation in a low voice. The door was locked and bolted but she still meant to be quiet. For a while nothing happened but then she saw it: a sea of snow, the flakes swirling in the wind beneath lead like skies. It spread where the Wall should have stood. She pressed and pressed but all she could see was snow. Wherever the Others were, the candle wouldn’t show her. One thing was certain, though. The Wall was gone in its entirety and the Others were moving south. A war-torn and famished Westeros would be no match for them. Besides, she knew from experience that the Westerosi would not unite against the common threat. It was almost as if they were anxious to die and be risen again like mindless slaves in service of magic creature the power of which made the mind stagger.

If there was anything Dany could not abide, it was slavery. Eternal, death-defying slavery simply made her skin crawl. She could have rained fire form above on the Others for that reason alone. Still she didn’t hate them. She knew too little of them for that. Perhaps there was some explanation for what they were doing, a peaceful way to end the war and co-exist, but if there was, the Others would not be open to discussing it as long as they were winning. No victor sued for peace. Victors conquered. She knew that better than most. And the Others would crush Westeros with little difficulty and then, strengthened with an army of all those they had killed there, they would be free to turn their attention to Essos. She would be caught in a war on two fronts then: from across the certain to freeze with the Others so near Narrow Sea, and from the East, from the side of the Grey Waste.

If she did not act soon, there would be no Dawn.

# # #

_Then_

“Be careful, Pale Goddess,” a low, breathy voice warned her.

Dany grabbed the protruding edge of a cliff and braced herself. The cautioning had come just in the nick of time. A narrow crevasse opened abruptly to her left. The mountains were treacherous but Dany had learnt to navigate quite a bit of them. Still she had never been to this side. Beneath her feet she saw a narrow cleft in the solid rock that would have almost been a valley. Long, chunky bones gleamed into a sunlight so pale it might as well belonged to the moon.

“I am not a goddess, Lahai” Dany told her companion, a respected warrior of the Shadowmen. The latter lived in villages ruled by councils of elders but those who distinguished themselves during reaving campaigns, both men and women, were differed to like a sort of unofficial leaders. “If I was a goddess, you wouldn’t have had to keep from taking a fall.”

Lahai shrugged. He was hard to read, his bulging eyes were dark golden with no white and no expression in them, the skin around them sunken and creased as if wrinkled, though he was no older than she was. His sallow skin had a faint greenish tint to it and there were rows of tiny, ruddy spikes on his bald head. His wide, bulky chest and thick arms were covered in black and red tattoos. Dany had come to learn they had magical power and were aimed at protecting their bearer from the many beasts wandering the Shadow Lands. After all, unlike her, these people were not unburnt dragonriders armed with Lightbringer. The dragons, demons, basilisks and many others could easily hurt and kill them.

“Perhaps you are a goddess and you don’t know it,” he offered after a brief pause, the words shuddering past his thick, always downwards scowled lips. “A daughter of the Maiden-Made-of-Light, like the God-on-Earth. Is the Lion-of-the-Night your father?”

“My father’s name was Aerys Targaryen and he was just a man,” she said as they carefully made their way to the field of dragon bones.

Silverwing, who had lead them there, was flying above their heads.

“Is this your family?” she asked the dragon who keened in response.

“See, you are a goddess. You can talk to dragons, you have a sword made of flame and you have come from Stygai, the Heart of Darkness where no living soul has ever entered. Only dragons dare fly above it.”

She picked one of the dragon horns that littered the ground for closer inspection. An idea occurred to her.

“I could enter Stygai because I was dead when Drogon brought me there,” she explained as she was twirling horn between her fingers.

It had been the spectacularly bad thing to say. Lahai thudded to his knees. Unti then l she had been careful to avoid mentioning her being brought back to life to the Shadowmen. They had been too close to worshiping her for comfort, anyway.

“I am your most humble servant, Pale Goddess,” Lahai professed with his head bowed. “And when the time comes for you to take a husbands as the God-on-Earth had taken his hundred wives, I hope you will think of your devoted Lahai.”

Silverwing flew closer with a screech.

_Traitor_ , Dany thought. She had a fairly good idea as to how she looked: standing there with her hair blowing in the wind and a dragon perched just above her head. Then she sighed. Now she had to figure out a way to let down Lahai gently. A hundred husbands? As if she didn’t have enough problems already.

# # #

Dany had once heard that her ancestors had used dragon-binding horns to control their mounts. She was discomfited by the idea. A dragon was not a slave. But the horn she had picked up from among the bones Silverwing had shown her could be useful to summon them instead. After all, when in flight with the sounds of the battle raging around her, she couldn’t just cry out to her dragons to call them to her side. Short on riders, she would need to train them to attack on their own, fly in formation and other things for which the horn could prove useful.

She pried the rabbit from Dragon’s claw. The poor thing was so scared he was practically paralyzed by it but Dany would bring it no comfort. She felt a stab of regret but then reminded herself that it was no different than killing the hare for food. She struck once with her double-edged dragonglass dagger. All the weapons of the Shadowmen, be they blades of battle axes, were made of dragonglass they mined themselves. Their reaving had never sat well with her but she had little room to berate them for it since it was the only way they could survive. But once she had a kingdom of her own again, then she could pay them handsomely to mine the dragonglass for her… and for the Great War.

She washed horn into the blood of the rabbit and then wiped it clean. Cutting into the side of her palm she used the blood that welled to write that a dragon was not a slave on the side of the horn then bound it to her blood and that of her line in perpetuity. She wrote over the blood with henna and climbed up on Dragon whom she instructed to take her to Stygai. Setting the dagger right on the border, she stood and stared at the dark silhouette of the corpse city dwarfing her. If she went it, she could return unharmed, she felt in the marrow of her bones, but she also knew that the more she entered Sygai, the less of her would come back. She walked to where Drogon had settled to sleep for the night and crawled under his wing. Her pupils too heavy to keep up, she fell asleep almost instantly.

Stygai cradled her and sang to her in her sleep. She no longer heard the sound of bells in her dreams. Neither did she feel pain and regret. There was no smell of burning flesh and no screams of horror. She no longer did she yearn for the kind, warm voice of Missandei or missed the adoration in Jorah’s eyes. She didn’t even see the red door and the lemon tree. Nor did she feel the cut of Jon’s dagger into her heart. All she saw was herself, however misshapen and terrbile. But she was also powerful and free, above and beyond anything that could hurt her.

_You shouldn’t be so close._

Her eyes flew open. She slipped off Drogon and went to retrieve her horn then climbed up into the mountains on foot, putting some distance between herself and Stygai. She found Melisandre huddled in a creased in the stone, her eyes round and full of fear. She looked human, much like Dany remembered her.

“You shouldn’t be so close,” Melisandre repeated.

“And you shouldn’t spy on people’s dreams,” Dany retorted. Privacy was often a strange notion in the Shadow with so much magic floating around and so many powerful wielders of it lurking about.

“I am only here to help, Daenerys Targaryen, the Twice Born. You are Azor Ahai, after all.”

Dany glared at her. “I’m not Westerosi… or a man. I’m not swayed by pretty words or the promises of your body and power.”

“You prefer Quaithe. You should know, though, that she has the same purpose like me. Only our roads towards it differs mine. Tell me, how clean do you think her hands are?”

Dany stifled a sigh. This was only the beginning. The would fight over her like mad dogs over scraps, she could sense it. Everybody would want to boast the discovery or the ownership of Azor Ahai. “Nobody’s hands are clean,” he replied sullenly and walked past Melisandre.

# # #

_Now_

Past her lemon grove and near the dragon pits there was a row of white, burnished dwellings. Dany walked to the third one and knocked on its red door. It opened almost immediately.

“My Queen,” said the chimera and stepped aside to admit Dany in.

“Fire and blood,” Dany greeted.

“For the Dawn! Sit… please….”

Chimeras were feared and had been banished and hunted down wherever she had gone in the past but, despite their outward appearance, they posed no danger. They were merely the sad descendants of the monstrous dark blood magic that had once sought to fuse man and beast. Some of them came from lines so ancient they dated back to when Stygai was not yet a corpse city. Others, like Rhae, were all that remained of the similar experiments of the Valyrians in places like Gogossos in the Basilisk Isles. Persecuted for their inhuman appearance, they had found refuge in the Shadow Lands, where no monster was turned down, but had followed Dany into the sun when she left.

“I have something to ask of you, Rhae,” Dany said.

The chimera looked at her with her large, oval eyes that were blood red in color. Rhae had strong, leathery wings which allowed her to cover many miles in one flight but her feet were like those of black panthers and she only had three, claw like fingers on her charcoal colored, scale covered hands.

“Anything, My Queen.”

Dany held up a scroll small enough to be fit for a raven. She had seared a drop of her own blood into the hot wax of her seal. “I need you to put this into the hands of the Necromancer King of Nefer.”

“Necromancer? I beg your pardon, Your Grace, but what could you want with a necromancer?”

“Nothing under the best of circumstances but these are not the best of circumstances.”

Rhae shook her head. “I will go, My Queen, of course I will but I urge you to reconsider.”

“This is not a command. You don’t have to go. I have heard things of Nefer and its surroundings that put the Shadow Lands to shame.”

“To me, the Shadow was nothing but home. I have feared Stygai but then everyone but the Shadow Queen feared the corpse city at the Heart of Darkness. I will go to Nefer. I am not afraid.”

“Thank you. I wished I had another way but I do not. It would take too long for a ship and with a journey so perilous, its return would be doubtful at best. And no raven would fly that far.”

Rhae smiled. Her face looked human but her hair was brittle and white as snow, though she was not old. “I am no raven.”

Dany breathed a deeper sigh of relief than she had intended. “You do not know how grateful I am for that! Be careful on your way, though. Do not fly past Nefer and to the Thousand Islands… or too far to Mossovy or to the Cannibal Sands and the Bleeding Sea…. Go straight to Nefer and no further.”

Rhae weighted the scroll in one palm. “The winds are changing and the nights grow longer still. I was born through magic so I can sense its ebb and flow and the world is brimming with it right now.”

“Are you asking me if this is another Long Night?”

“I know it is.”

Dany slipped closer and put a hand on Rhae’s shoulder. “Don’t be afraid!”

“I’m not afraid of death but…. I heard whispers of the first Long Night. The Enemy that came from the North turned the dead into slaves to fight for them.”

Dany grasped the other woman’s shoulder through the flimsy material of the tunic covering her all too human torso. “I am Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, the Mother of Dragons, the Sorceress Queen. I was born to fight them… twice. And I will! They will never come to New Valyria. They will never touch my kingdom. I am the princess that was promised and I will bring back the Dawn!”

# # #

The holding cell was not half bad, actually. It was small but clean with thankfully dry wall cut into chalky white stone. It even hand a rather large though iron barred window as well as the most heavy-set wood door Arya had ever seen. They fed her at regular intervals and did so well while also giving her plenty of water and to spare. She had been asked if she would behave if taken out to some garden for a walk. Arya regretted lashing out to her guards in reply.

The door to her cell opened and in came Daenerys Targaryen herself. She was dressed differently than when Arya had last seen her. The black leathers had been replaced by an azure dress with golden trimmings. There were considerably less braids in her hair too, some of her long curls flowing over her slim shoulders that were encased in an ethereal, aquamarine colored shawl. Her arms were bare this time and Arya could see the lean and sinewy muscles straining beneath the Queen’s pale skin. She no longer slim so slight and the dress looked oddly on her, as if she was in disguise, as if she was rather meant to wear the black leather armor instead.

Daenerys stood in the doorway between two Unsullied guards. “Are you going to lunge at me or could we perhaps converse like the two civilized people we are supposed to be?”

“Supposedly civilized people don’t insult each other,” Arya snapped.

The Queen took a step inside. She was armed, Arya could tell. From her gait she guessed there was a small dagger of some kind tied to her right ankle.

“Shall I recount all the way in which you insulted me the last time we saw each other?”

This was beginning to get on Arya’s last nerve. “What do you want?”

Daenerys’ smile was only slightly patronizing. “I was about to ask you the same thing. I have never managed to ascertain. Your sister, Sansa, is easy to read. She wants a crown atop her head and for everyone to bow and call her Queen.”

“So do you!”

“Yes. This is how I know what you sister wants but you…. I have watched you at Winterfell. There was not much else to do given that nobody wanted to engage with the foreign whore. And I saw you with the new Lord Baratheon…. Of course! I cannot believe I have not seen it before. You are like me.”

“I’m nothing like you,” Arya shouted.

“Yes, you are. You want to go home, to be loved and accepted for who you are. But when you did arrive home, you discovered it was an illusion, nothing like you dreamed it would be. So now you want to make it your own way but you are not sure what that means.”

Arya stared at her. That tiny woman that radiated power both human and otherwise. For the first time since she knew her, Arya felt defenseless in front of Daenerys Targaryen. “You’re a witch,” she accused. “You read my mind.”

Daenerys lifted one dainty little finger. A flame bloomed from the tip instantly. “I’m a pyromancer with a few shadowbinding abilities, not a mind reader.” The flame died and Daenerys lowered her hand back to her side. “I am going to give you a bit of advise: don’t run. It never helps! Make your own way. Build the home you want the way you want with the people you want in it.”

“Piles of ashes don’t get to build anything. You’re about to burn me alive, aren’t you?”

“If that was intent, don’t you think you’d be ash already? No, I am setting you free. I had new sailors hired to replace the ones you have lost, your ship is supplied with sufficient food and gold to last you until you return to Westeros, if that is where you are going.”

“This is some kind of a trick, isn’t it? You pretend to let me go only to snatch me back right when I think I’m free?”

“I assure you I am much too busy for such silly games.”

“Why would you not only release me but also pay for may way back home?”

“I have my reasons?”

“And those are?”

“My reasons.”

“I’m not gonna help when you come to invade Westeros again!”

Daenerys laughed breezily. “I have an army of dragons, several regular ones and two things Westeros doesn’t but badly needs: food and money. How much help do you think I need?”

Arya frowned. “Then why?”

“On your way home, you might want to stop by the House of Black and White in Braavos. How you could think to leave the way you did and steal a few of their faces too, I would never understand. You needn’t worry, though. I paid your debt. A conquest provides enough faces and deaths to appease even the Faceless Men.”

Arya looked at her suspiciously. “Is this an apology of some kind for King’s Landing? Your way of seeking forgiveness?”

Pain flashed briefly in the Queen’s imperious, amethyst eyes before she schooled her expression back to a cool, neutral one. Her lips paled and pursed together in a manner that could almost be called nervous. “No apology would suffice and no forgiveness can be found.” Daenery’s voice hit like a stone.

Arya wrapped her arms around herself as if struck by a sudden chill. She didn’t want to feel sorry for woman in front of her. She pushed her mind back to that day, to the ash covering the burnt down stone and the screams of the women and children. “Are you going to invade Westeros again?”

“If the question was that simple, the answer would be no.”

Had she always been this cryptic? Arya didn’t know her well enough to make an accurate assessment. “What does that even mean?”

The Queen arched a brow and turned to leave. “Do not go North, Lady Stark, and above all, avoid the Three-Eyed Raven. I heard Dorne is faring as well as it can under the dire circumstances in Westeros. House Martell has no reason to bear you any ill. I am certain you could spend some time there unmolested.”

“You don’t want me to warn Bran, is that it? Bran can see everything, you know.”

Something dark moved on the Queen’s profile. “Your brother is gone, Lady Stark, and ravens are all liars.”

The Queen was gone with a swish of her silk gown. Arya remained staring. Despite herself, Daenerys had gotten to her. A sense of foreboding overcame her. It quickly morphed into panic, though. Jon…. If Daenerys Targaryen came to Westeros again, Jon would die. She ran through the open door.

“Wait!”

The Unsullied crossed their spears in front of Arya barring her from rushing after the departing Queen. Arya was just about to lounge at them when a wall of fire blocked her passage.

“We are finished here, Lady Stark,” echoed Daenerys’ voice from beyond the flaming divider. “Safe travels!”

TBC


	9. Chapter 9

_Are you flesh, or are you spirit?_

_I am sorrow._

(Quote from the movie, _Ladyhawk)_

_Then_

Tyrion looked at the weirwood trees being transplanted into the newly cleaned godsood of King’s Landing. The old trees had burnt down. None of them had been weirwood, however. An unusually cold wind ruffled Tyrion’s hair as she shifted his weight from one leg to the other trying to devise a way to broach the delicate subject.

“I will carve the faces myself,” the King said, his voice as cool as the wind.

Tyrion winced. “Your Grace, everyone south of the Neck follows the Faith of the Seven, including your Mother’s family. Far be it from me to tell you cannot practice your religion but we need to proceed with caution. It would not do to alienate the Faith.”

“There is no High Septon since Queen Cersei, is there? And all the septons and septas burnt with the rest of King’s Landing. There is no one here we need to appease.”

“But there are quite a few who would need appeasing everywhere else in the Six Kingdoms and more than enough talk of rebellion. I think it would be wise not to stir matters further especially when it comes to religion.”

“I can see anything and everything that is stirring. If the Faith thinks to move against us, I will see it and we will crush in time.”

“Your Grace,” Tyrion started and realized his alarm had rung too clearly in his voice. “With all due respect, that was what my sister thought when she burnt the Sept of Baelor with wildfire. I do not believe that is the model you wish to emulate.”

Bran the Broken turned his head, his eyes as calm as the icy surface of a frozen lake. “She never had problems with the Faith after that, did she? Why should we not imitate her reign in that at least?”

“The people thought my sister a tyrant.”

“But did nothing to overthrown her. If it hadn’t been for the Dragon Queen, Cersei Lannister would still be queen and King’s Landing would still stand. I can tell you what anyone even remotely connected with the Faith is doing right now. They would not pose a problem.”

“Can you see where Drogon is too?” Tyrion bit back

Something dark twisted on the King’s normally impassive face. “In the Shadow,” he said quietly and turned his gaze back to the weirwood trees being planted.

Tyrion swallowed uncomfortably, shifting under his King’s gaze, and decided on another course of action. “That should be far enough,” he remarked neutrally, though he had the impression Bran seemed disturbed by the mention of Drogon. That in itself was bizarre. Nothing disturbed Bran. “The people have been at war for years,” the Hand continued after a pause. “The reconstruction of King’s Landing is going slowly and the winter is harsh and unforgiving. Personally, I have never cared for the gods but others might find comfort in them in these trying times.”

“Then they should turn to the Old Gods. They are the ones that are true. They watch us through the trees. We need to plant them eyes again everywhere in the Six Kingdoms.”

The wind rattled the leaves of the five young weirwood trees Bran had ordered brought to the godswood in King’s Landing. It was the only part about the reconstruction of the city that interested him. The rustle of the leaves sounded a lot like human whispers. It suddenly occurred to Tyrion just how much those leaves looked as if they had been cut from blood.

# # #

A mat had been spread on the slab of stone where Dany was laid on her front. The mat was coarse and scratched at her skin but she paid it no heed. Quaithe’s brush dabbed at the skin of her back tracing protective glyphs in red henna mixed in with goat blood. The gentle touch was like a caress and almost hypnotic. She could hear a few Shadowmen children play just outside the cave. Drogon was perched on a cliff nearby and the cries of the other dragons could be heard in the distance.

She was leaving early the next morning and the thought filled her with no small amount of trepidation. She would fly on Drogon and take the rest of the dragons with her too along with a host of other creatures who had found their refuge in the Shadow over time but wanted to return to live in the sun under her protection. Her first destination was the Basilisk Isles where she was determined to burn the pirates, their ships and their strongholds. No longer would they terrorize the seas and steal people away to sell as slaves.

Missandei’s people on Naath would be safe from being abducted and sold like cattle as it had happened to her friend. Then she would leave two dragons there to guard Naath from any new threat. Her heart seared painfully at the thought of Missandei. She was always with her, in her dreams and in her memory. No kingdom in the world could make up for the loss of a true friend. All the kingdoms in the world could not replace Missandei. If Dany had known she would lose her to Westeros, she would have given up on the Iron Throne right there and then.

“We are finished, My Queen,” Quaithe said, startling Dany out of her maudlin thoughts.

Dany slid off the flagstone and stood as Quaithe held up a mirror to her. It was the largest and clearest one Dany had ever seen. It had come from Yi Ti. From all she had learned of Yi Ti in the Shadow, Dany had begun to see why the Essosi thought the Westerosi to be savages. The civilization of Yi Ti had been old when the mountains had been young.

Quaithe had first painted on her shoulders and the left side of her chest, the marks of an odd, dark beauty. Dany stared at herself for a few moments longer than she had intended. Deprived of proper sunshine for almost a year, her skin had become so pale it resembled that of the white ghosts of Stygai. Her eyes looked haunted but then her heart and mind could have given Stygai a run for its money when it came to demons and specters. Her lips were discolored too and cracked from the harsh mountain winds. The hair she had chopped off with Lightbringer after leaving the corpse city was overgrown and falling over her shoulders in uneven, silvery strands. She no longer looked like the most beautiful woman in the world as she had once been called.

However, the most glaring difference from the woman she had once been resided above her heart. The scar that curved around her breast until it dug into the milky flesh was not long or wide but it was deep. It wasn’t even a scar exactly, more like an opening into the skin revealing the red inside of the torn muscle. Thankfully the gash did not open all the way to her heart but she had used the flames to see it one time. There was whole in her heart where Jon’s dagger had carved it. The heart beat and the blood flowed in and out ignoring the hideous slash. The blade had also cut off a vein but that one had been knit back into its place, though the lesion had left it twisted.

She remembered the iron like taste on her tongue as the blood had pooled into her throat choking her before it spilled out, the face of Jon growing increasingly blurry above her. Then the flashes in the darkness, the promise of something more just beyond her reach, then Stygai. Had Jon discarded her there on the floor like a rabid dog he had just put down? The left side of her chest began to ache and burn.

“My Queen, are you unwell?” Quaithe asked.

An all too human hand grabbed her upper arm. Shadowbinders excelled at projecting illusions. She wavered on her feet before doubling over in pain. She needed to be just as good at spinning mirages as shadowbinders were. Yes, she wanted to howl, I am unwell, deeply so, I might never be well again. But she could not. She couldn’t let even Quaithe see just how unwell she was. She couldn’t let anyone see!

She spat bile on the stone floor of the cave then threw up her lunch. She wanted to grab onto Quaithe and cry and beg. _Don’t make me go back. I don’t want to go back._ She wanted to run to Stygai and sob and plead. _I don’t want to go_. But it would have been just as useful as it had been imploring Viserys not to sell her to Khal Drogo.

_A sword,_ she murmured to herself. _I am the sword in the darkness and swords do not cry, beg or writhe in pain. They do what they have been forged to do._

# # #

_Now_

Dany thanked her handmaidens and dismissed them. Only when she was alone, did she take off her robe. She never disrobed before anyone anymore. She wouldn’t even let Daario see despite his pledges and assurances. She knew he spoke the truth. He would not be repulsed and he would try to comfort her the best he could. The fault was not with him but with her. She was the one who could not bear his gaze on _it_.

She descended the steps to the giant, sunken pink marble tub. It was big enough to swim in it. The vapor floated above heady with the smell of bitter almond milk, orange peel and cedarwood oil mixed in with just a few drops of the essence of a flower called gardenia that flourished on the isle of Leng. Sadly she didn’t have time to enjoy her bath tonight. So she washed herself quickly and reluctantly swam back to the edge of the pool. She came out as flagrant drops rolled down her skin. She glanced at herself in the full-length Yi Tish mirror.

Her skin glowed healthily, milk and honey from the bright sun of New Valyria. Her lips were lush and rosy once more and her eyes glinted with purpose. Her silvery hair was just as long as it had been before her death and cut evenly. If she ignored the left side of her chest, she could almost feel like herself again. She ran her palm over the scar and concentrated. When she removed the hand, the skin was perfect, unblemished. A glamour aimed at the eye was easy enough to cast but touch was harder to fool.

It would be a while until she could set sail for Westeros but still getting reacquainted with Jon Snow was something she could not manage to plan for. She remembered the last time she had seen him, his face fading as her life drained out. She blinked and stumbled. Her mouth filled with the iron tang of blood. She didn’t want to go. She didn’t want to see him again, let alone…. She didn’t want to!

She spat the bile that had accumulated in her throat on the perfectly polished marble floor of her bath. The left side of her chest sent tendrils of agony coursing through her body. _A sword,_ she muttered to herself. _I am a sword… the sword in the darkness and swords do not want or writhe in pain. They do what they have been forged to do._

She splashed cold water onto her face from a nearby basin before she toweled herself dry and put her robe back on. Returning to her quarters, she allowed her handmaidens to help dry her hair and pull it back in a bun on her nape. Then they helped dress her into a rather plain, peach colored dress that covered her chest all the way to her neck. Only the golden straps tied at her shoulders recalled her high position.

She dined simply: a hot and spicy fish broth and cold Pentoshi duck leftover from lunch. She didn’t have much of an appetite but she forced herself to eat. It would not do to faint from hunger. At the end she nibbled on some candied ginger as she had found it always settled her stomach.

When she was finished with diner, she draped herself in a long shawl that matched the straps of her dress and set upon descending her tower. The night had enveloped her capital in a blackness so deep if felt as if it had a substance of its own. Dany required no torch, however, the flame igniting from her fingers lighting her way. Several Unsullied guards and one of her bloodriders followed her like silent shadows.

She bypassed her lemon grove and delved into the dragon pits heading towards what looked like a large, square block of purple dragonglass hidden at its center. The guards remained at a respectful distance behind her. The building had no doors only tiny niches carved up too high up in its walls for a man to reach. She put her hands on the wall already feeling the large chunks of oily, black stone embedded in the structure on the inside. She concentrated and she was in. She navigated the darkened maze with ease. After all, she was the one who had it built, supervising the project herself, based on the example provided by the mysterious labyrinths of Lorath.

Only the wider corridor in the middle had fire burning in small, round hearths along the walls. In between the hearths there were lit glass candles. The chamber was occupied by a long, narrow table carved from green dragonglass. The chairs were made of dragonstone too but this time it was black. The oily stone was integrated as if in guise of ornaments in chairs and the table as well. Everyone present stood as Dany came in.

“ _Perzys ānogār_ ,” she greeted.

“Syt se ñāqes,” came the answer.

She sat down and everyone followed suit. “Thank you for coming. I have summoned you to tell you I will discuss sailing to Westeros with the Great Council of the Realm that will gather in two week’s time. Unless unavoidable, I will not speak to them of the great threat from the North.”

“Your Grace, if I may,” Kinvara started. “If you are concerned they will not believe you, we can easily make them see. After all, I sit on the Council of the Realm on behalf of the freed slave of Volantis.”

“I am not afraid they will not believe me, Kinvara. I am afraid they will. And then what? They will go home and tell my people that the life of every man, woman and child in the world is in grave and immediate danger, that a new Long Night is upon us, and that their Queen abandons them to sail for a shore many in Essos have barely heard of. I will not leave my people in a state of panic and my kingdom in such turmoil. If the Great War goes badly, they will find out anyway but if we win with none here the wiser, this will be simply a longer and darker winter.”

Quaithe’s chestnut brown eyes fixed on her. They held a warning. “I fear it will not be as easy as you say, My Queen.”

“Hope can be a dangerous thing but I choose it over despair. Since I sit her as Azor Ahai reborn, it is my prerogative. The moment so much as one of the Others sets foot on our side of the world, we will make the truth widely known. Then and only then.”

Quaithe inclined her head. “I still would like to request that we come with you. If not all then as many as possible.”

“How many shadowbinders do you think will come?” Dany wanted to know.

“As you said, you are Azor Ahai reborn, the princess that was promised. All!”

“The aeromancers will come as well.”

“As will the fire mages.”

“And the shapechangers!”

“There is hardly any sorcerer who will refuse the Shadow Queen.”

Dany held up a hand and the cries from around the table ceased instantly. “I have sent a chimera with a message to Nefer. We shall see what the necromancers and the demon hunters have to say. That leaves only earth magic and greenseeing.”

Kinvara smirked. “A dangerous topic, My Queen.”

Dany leaned back in her chair. “We are dangerous too.”

The kindly old man from Braavos turned his head slowly to look at her. “The Faceless Men heed the word of the emissary of the Many-Faced God, she who traveled to the City of Death and returned. There are many figments of memory in the faces we keep. One whispered that the bloodstone is poison. Slow poison for most thing. This is why the Dragon Queen was wise not to let it touch the ground of New Valyria. But immediate poison to the weirwood trees.”

Dany’s stomach lurched. She didn’t like it but then any advantage was welcome. She eyed Quaithe once more. “You will go to Asshai. Immediately! I will fly out too at first light but I will be going to the Shadow.”

# # #

It was all as the Dragon Queen had said: the repairs to the ship, the restaffed crew, the plentiful food and the gold. Arya found her cabin as she had left it, as if nobody had ruffled through it, and her weapons, which had been taken from her at the public latrine of New Valyria, were laid out on the bed. She took Needle gratefully but she remained suspicious of everything else. She fully expected a dragon to come and burn her but they left port without any problems. The sea was calm and turquoise in color, the wind favorable. So they sailed away with ease much to Arya’s continuing disbelief. Why would Daenerys Targaryen just let her go? Why would she even pay for her return trip? It didn’t make any sense.

Night fell as Arya stood on deck waiting for fire to rain down upon her from above. But the cries of the dragons stayed behind in New Valyria and her ship just drifted away. Finally, exhaustion and hunger got the better of her and she went into her cabin. First she searched her things, however, fully expecting a nasty surprise to be waiting for her among them. Nothing seemed out of order, though. Even her travel notes had been put back. Underneath them she did find something: a deep green leather bound book with a silver spine.

Arya opened it cautiously. The pages were yellowed betraying the book’s real age. It had to have been rebound recently. It was written in the common tongue, which was a good thing, for Arya had learn High Valyrian in Braavos but only to speak it, not to read and write. The biggest surprise, however, was the title: _The Magical History of House Stark_ by one Septon Barth.

Just like there were Essosi books in Westeros or so Maester Luwin had told her, there were Westerosi books in Essos. She had seen some herself while in Braavos. So the presence of the book there was hardly odd. What was strange, however, was that Arya, a Stark herself, had never heard of this one. Also why would the Dragon Queen have it placed in her cabin?

Upon inspection she discovered that some pages had their corners folded like a kind of bookmark. Those pages often had sentences underlined in red ink. From place to place there was writing in the margins. It didn’t look exactly like the writing of a queen—an inelegant scrawl that was worse than even Arya’s less than calligraphic penmanship—but she had no doubt the notes belonged to Daenerys. Stranger still, the underlined sentences seemed to follow no logic as they failed to connect with each other.

_The Starks killed the Warg King, his sons, his beasts and his greenseers, but took his daughters as prizes…._

_The Starks have manned the Wall for thousands of years…._

_The King of Winter belonging to House Stark won the savage War of the Wolves and killed Gaven Greywolf along with his entire kin…._

_The Starks themselves have been rumored to skinchange into direwolves, bird and even humans at time… but no evidence of this remains…._

_Brandon Stark also named the Breaker formed an alliance with Joramun, the King-Beyond-the-Wall for reasons unknown….Joramun was said to have awakened giants from the earth with the Horn of Winter…._

_Terrible, the secrets we keep_ , the Queen had written in the margin. _Even worse, those we reveal._

_The North remembers…._

… _not nearly enough_ , Daenerys had completed in the margin.

Arya slammed the book shut. She hated that she could hear the other woman’s voice so clearly in her head.

_Do not go North… ravens are all liars._

Perhaps Daenerys had bewitched her. That was the only explanation she could think of.

She went to get dinner but the book stayed on her mind. The sailors were pleased. Daenerys had supplied them with plenty of smoked and salted beef and goat meat among other things as well as a sweet red from Lys. Arya ignored the wine but did bring a plate of roasted goat and flat bread back into her cabin. She ended up eating only a little of it, though, before she opened the book again.

_Osric Stark became the youngest Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch at age ten…._

_All men must serve_ , the Queen had scribbled by that paragraph. _All women too._

Arya shut the book again. Daenerys Targaryen was mad just like her father. Hence the senseless book and the disjointed writings.She flipped the pages again.

_The Starks killed the Warg King, his sons, his beasts and his greenseers, but took his daughters as prizes…._

_Terrible, the secrets we keep. Even worse, those we reveal._

Arya jolted awake. Sometime during the night she had fallen asleep fully dressed, one hand still holding onto the strange book of her family history. The candle had obviously burned out so she was cast in darkness. She had dreamt of running through the snow, the tree branches jostling above her and the cold seeping through her paws, the taste of the blood of a fresh kill on her tongue. It had been years since she had had dreams such as this one. The last one had been in Braavos shortly after her arrival.

_The Starks killed the Warg King... took his daughters as prizes…._

“No!” Arya called out in the dark.

TBC


	10. Chapter 10

_Now_

“We should have stayed in the castle!”

The cry of his Queen’s voice pierced through Daario slumber waking him in an instant. He scrambled out of bed. One hand closed around the pommel of his arakh and the other dragged his stiletto before his eyes even opened. When they did they were forced to squint against the unpleasantly white glare of the tall glass candle by the Queen’s bed. Glass candles were much more than mere candles but the queen still liked to use them for their far superior lighting. Daenerys was reading, oblivious to his alarm. Nothing had moved around the bedroom since he had fallen asleep. He set down his weapons and scrubbed a hand over his face.

“What are you reading?”

She raised up the thick, off-putting tome she was engrossed in.

“An History of the Great Sieges of Westeros by Archmaester… how do you read that name?”

“I do not know…. It says right here the castle presents the greatest strategic advantage in a siege…. We should have never left the walls of Winterfell. They were our best weapon. If we had stayed inside, I could have avoided the massacre of the Dothraki… and Jorah would still be alive, here with me.”

He got back into bed, stretching next to her. What she was saying didn’t make much sense to him but he latched onto one thing he could chime in about. “A castle is useless against a dragon, let alone more. In a little over four years, you conquered most of Essos from the Bone Mountains to Braavos thanks to your dragon army.” He propped himself up on his open palm and looked at her. “Why should Westeros be any different?” He yawned. It had to be late, though with the increasingly shorter days and longer nights, it was hard to tell. “You should get some sleep. You’ve just come back from the Shadow and you have a council meeting to attend tomorrow.”

“I have required less rest and food since being brought back from the dead,” she replied absently as she turned the page.

He frowned, pulling at the thread of his concern whenever Westeros was mentioned. It didn’t matter much to him if she wanted that savage wasteland. He would help her conquer it or die trying. He was indifferent on the topic of his own death. It was hers that worried him. “Yes, but you still require it,” he stressed.

She hummed something under her breath, adsorbed by what looked to be a particularly ponderous read. He sat up on the bed. Even in the unforgiving light of the glass candle, she still looked shockingly beautiful: the lines of her profile were delicately drawn and subtly elegant, the violet of her eyes reminding him of raw amethyst, her silvery hair appearing to be one hue darker. She also seemed small and fragile, the burnished golden sheets all but swallowing her up. It was a mirage, though. She was one of the strongest person he knew, certainly stronger than himself, stronger than any of the petty tyrants who had contracted him while he had been a sellsword.

“What’s going on?”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“You have been gathering food as if this winter is gonna last forever. You’ve been sending gold to the Shadow Lands so the Shadowmen would mine dragonglass, since you came back. You had those YiTish pikes made with it and ordered the Unsullied to learn to fight with them, though they barely have any use for them. And now you’re studying on how to defend besieged castles, though if we go to Westeros, you will be the one laying siege to them, however briefly, since dragonfire can melt down their walls.”

“I thought we were past this kind of insolence from you,” she commented dryly without raising her eyes from her book.

This kind of words did hit their target at times and now was such an occasion, though he was careful never to let her see the effect they had on him. “When you came back from the Shadow, everyone wanted to know what you saw in Stygai but I never cared because I’m planning a visit there anytime soon and the only thing that interested me was that you are alive and well. I am not asking to satisfy my curiosity. I want to help you.”

“You cannot! Nobody can.”

“You act is if the weight of the world is on your shoulders.” Alright, maybe a bit of hurt did slip through every now and then.

It had been the wrong thing to say. Her expression became steel. Valyrian steel! She tossed her book on the bed but instead of ordering him to leave, she just locked eyes with him.

“If I told you a story so incredible, nobody sane could believe, would you think me mad?”

He squeezed her hand, cursing himself internally for his stupidity. She was obviously struggling with something and he had let his wounded ego dictate his actions and words. “You’re not mad, I promise you,” he said emphatically.

A tiny tear bid, like slim pearl, ran out of her left eye and dribbled onto her cheek. She squeezed the tips of his fingers before snatching her hand away. She slipped out of the bed and padded to the overcrowded bookshelf she kept in her bedroom, returning with an elongated, brown leather box. The faded glyphs were unfamiliar to him.

“This book is from Yi Ti. As is the dagger-ax I wanted the Unsullied to learn to use.” She took out a handful of yellowed pages strung together with threads of gold. “It’s the oldest written record I could find of them.”

He knew next to nothing about Yi Ti. He had had a fling with a woman from there once but they hadn’t done much talking. He was aware, though, that the Queen had picked up the language while in the Shadow.

“Them?” he asked.

She pushed the pages towards him tapping her finger against a miniature. A creature stood in the shadow of snow-covered forest. It could have been a man but then maybe it wasn’t. The being was tall and white-skinned, wrapped in an equally white cloak, its ice sculptured face expressionless. A giant spider with numerous, crystal blue eyes stood next to it.

“They are the Others,” Daenerys said. “But in Yi Ti they were called the Neverborn.”

He was unnerved, despite himself. “From their name I take it that they’re not human or friendly.”

The extremely focused look in her eyes didn’t serve to put him at ease.

“They have come again to kill every man, woman and child in the world and add them to their army of the dead.”

“So they’re evil.”

“Is fire evil when it tears through a village burning everyone in their beds because someone left a candle burning for too long? Are the winds of winter evil when they freeze everyone in their path? What about the storm that causes ship to wreck against the cliffs? I don’t know if they are evil or good. I think they might be above and beyond them both.”

“You are making them sound as inevitable as a storm at sea,” he pointed out.

She shook her head, frowning. “No, I believe someone forgot a candle burning for too long.”

“They come from Westeros, don’t they?”

“They are here. They have always been here.” She turned the pages to another ominous looking figure: a tall man dressed in black with burning, white eyes surrounded by shrouded, dark figures. “The Bloodstone Emperor,” she explained. “He was the last ruler of the Great Empire of the Dawn. He slew his sister and took her throne. He cast aside the gods of Yi Ti and worshiped the bloodstone, the same dark stone that drinks the light from Asshai. It fell from the sky. He started a reign of terror unlike anything anyone had ever seen before then, ate human flesh and practiced necromancy, torture and black magic. The people of Leng and Yi Ti claim that his deeds ushered in the Long Night which was a punishment from the gods but I think he literally caused it. He was powerful… powerful than sorcerer living now. He had to have performed a ritual that he couldn’t control and it broke the balance of our world forever. And in the Long Night… they came. The Others.”

“Why?”

“That I do not know… yet. But I know they can be fought off.”

“That is easy. Man or beast, anything can be killed and killing is what I am good at.” He paused, hesitating only briefly. “You do know the Great Empire of the Dawn is mythical, don’t you?”

Her jaw set, her expression shifting to one of vehemence. “No, it’s not. I saw it… only glimpses but I saw it… in Stygai. It was the greatest empire the world has ever known, occupying the entirety of Essos, parts of Westeros and the northern coast of Sothoryos. And it was peaceful and prosperous, there were no slaves and the people were happy and learned. They practiced magic without blood sacrifices and only to make their lives better.” She gripped his right upper arm with surprising force, the conviction in her voice galvanizing. It reminded him why he was always ready to follow her to the ends of the earth and back even if they had to stop through hell on the way. “Don’t you see? It’s possible. The world was not always a place of horror and injustice. The wheel didn’t always turn. A better world can be built.”

“You’re not trying to rebuild Valyria,” he muttered in awe. “You want to rebuild the Great Empire of the Dawn.”

“The empire of my ancestors had slavery and cruel magic. All this came from the Long Night. The world was a broken place after it but this time, when the Dawn comes, it can be the opposite. The world can be healed.”

That sounded like a plan to him. “What can I do?”

# # #

_Then_

The first time Grey Worm had heard the screech of a dragon again was just off the coast of the Naath. He and what remained of his Unsullied were trying to figure out how to set foot on the isle without frightening its people and without dying from the dreaded butterfly fever themselves. He tipped his head back and searched the clear blue sky. The large, black shadow of Drogon was there just as he had expected making circles in the bright sunlight. He squinted, his heart racing. Could it be? He didn’t dare dream.

The dragon lowered himself until he was right above the mast with steady blows of its majestic wings. Grief and guilt singed pierced Grey Worm’s heart. He had failed his Queen. He couldn’t defend her and he hadn’t managed to avenge her. He heard cries from his fellow shipmates, the hope in them ringing painfully in their commander’s ears. Soon more dragons songs filled the air. A host of dark silhouettes were flying in from the horizon. One of them broke off and headed straight for the small fleet. It was large but not as large as Dragon and ashen in color, his wings glittering like sliver in the sun. Silver was the hair of his rider too. The new dragon stretched a wing until it touched the deck of Grey Worm’s ship. The Queen glided off it draped in a dark blue cloak, her long, unbraided hair flowing in the wind.

Grey Worm finally understood why the Dothraki called their leaders _blood of my blood_. He sank to his knees murmuring: “Blood of my blood.”

The Queen ran to him, the sound her feet rattling on the wooden deck making her all the more real. She knelt next to him and threw her arms around his neck hugging him fiercely, as if her life depended on it. “My friend,” she said. “My dear, dear friend.”

# # #

_Now_

The Great Council Hall was as big as the Throne Room and equally round. The walls were covered in colorful mosaics depicting famous vistas from the Realm: the Titan of Braavos, the Long Bridge of Volantis, the forest of Qohor, the labyrinths of Lorath, the Great Pyramid of Meereen, the three walls of Quarth, the Horse Gate of Vaes Dothrak, a statue of the Great Sheppard of worshiped in Lhazar, the tigers of Leng, the cliffs of the Cinnamon Straits, the volcanoes of Marahai and the towers of New Valyria. The domed roof, however, was covered in paintings of flying dragons, the Queen’s three children prominent among them.

One statue towered over the central table. It was carved from white marble and represented Ser Barristan the Bold who had suggested to Dany the idea of the round table during their many discussions on the ruling of Meereen. The table occupied the center of the room and for it was large, it was also plain and unadorned as were the chairs. They were all made out of ebony. No chair was taller or more elegant than the other. They were all common ebony chairs even a poor merchant could afford to keep in his house.

Dany came in carrying a large bouquet of roses, some blood red, others black. She looked every inch the queen of a peaceful and prosperous kingdom since she was wore a gold and silver dress made of Naathi silk. Free of the scourge of the pirates, the Naathi had left the refuge of the island’s jungles and started to make their famous silk again. Though Dany always insisted she wanted nothing in exchange for the protection of her dragons, she was still sent lavish gifts of silk which she doled out generously to those who would murmur about the preferential treatment the Naathi received. Perhaps it wasn’t the best of politics but it was the least she could in Missandei’s memory.

“Fire and blood,” she greeted in High Valyrian.

“For the Dawn,” came the chorus reply.

“We have gathered here,” she spoke. “To honor the memory the memory of Ser Barristan the Bold who came before us forged the path we have embarked upon.” She placed the flowers in the urn at the feet of the statue and inclined her head respectfully before taking a seat at the table as well. “The Great Council of the Realm has now come in session. During this time it shall rule the land with respect to its law, wisdom and love for the people. At this table, there are no kings or queens. At this table we are one voice, we each have a vote and speak the truth and only the truth as far as we understand it. Who wishes to address us first?”

“We know the Iron Bank sent its envoy to the Queen. Are we to take Westeros at long last?”

Dany leaned back in her chair. Formally she lead the meetings but only for order’s sake. According to the edict she had drawn up herself, the decisions of the Council were taken by a majority vote. Even if they voted against her, she could not go against their choice. While the Council was not in session, she was queen. In this room, however, she was only one of the equals.

“I’m surprised Quarth is so keen on me retaking the throne of my ancestors.”

A pair of dark brown eyes regarded her shrewdly as the representative from Quarth answered her. “Quarth does not care to whom Westeros belonged before now. The Kingdom of the Rising Sun does not need a birth right to take what it wants. Ours is a Dragon Queen. Our concern is another, however. With each passing day the former Seven Kingdoms sink deeper and deeper into chaos. We have searched the annals and never in its history was the commerce of Greatest City that Ever Was and Ever Will Be with Westeros at such a low. Ours silk merchants only receive orders from Essos now. If Westeros disappears completely down the pit engulfing it at present, the trade of the entire Essos will suffer. After all, we are dependent upon places to sell our merchandise to.”

“Tyrosh agrees. The state of Westeros is so deplorable now that before long we will be chained to a dead body.”

“As does Lorath.”

“Volantis will follow the Dragon Queen wherever she might lead,” Kinvara said slyly.

“So will Norvos.”

“And Myr.”

“Pentos will side with Braavos. The former Seven Kingdoms need to be saved from themselves. So we can all prosper.”

“The sooner the better. We all stand to lose a great deal from the breaking down of Westeros,” the representative from Qohor chimed in.

Khiara, the God-Empress of Leng, smiled thinly, her dark angular eyes sparkling. The Lengii venerated Dany as the Goddess-on-Earth and Khiara saw her as a slightly higher situated kind of equal. Khiara, named after her great ancestor who had liberated Leng from Yi Ti and unified the island again, was shrewd and dangerous and Dany consulted her on a great deal of issues even outside the Great Council. “All of the Free Cities and Quart in agreement for once. I’m pleased to be here on this historic day. Leng trades with Westeros too but above all we bow to the Goddess-on-Earth. I will commit as many ships as necessary as well as riders to the cause of the Shadow Queen.”

From there is dissolved into a fury of discussions and pledges of military support. Braavos boasted about its ability to build a ship in day and the great fleet it would rise for the Dragon Queen. Others promised gold and sellswords. Astapor that now made her dragonglass weapons lauded their work and offered to make more. Truth be told, there was something for everyone in Westeros. Some wanted their lucrative trade with other continent to be restored. Others salivated at the thought of spoils of war. Some thought a fight would be good for invigorating the kingdom and giving the remaining local sellsword companies something to do. Others hoped for glory or lordships in Westeros. The Dothraki yelled about avenging their fallen comrades. A few even wanted to spread their religion on new shores.

The decision was made rather quickly and nearly unanimously. Only Dany had abstained stating that she wished to defer entirely to the Council on this matter. Khiara caught her eye across the table. The Lengii suspected something.

“This council should rule in my absence,” Dany said.

A few worried glances were traded over the table.

“You have powerful armies, Mhysa,” one of the three representative of the freed slaves stated. “You need not go yourself.”

“We all know what guarantees a quick and successful conquest: dragons. And I’m the only one who can control them. The first time I failed, I will be the first to admit, but I only had three dragons then. Now I have more.”

Khiara started, visibly alarmed. She knew!

“Will you stay in Westeros?” somebody asked haltingly.

“No. My home is here. No other throne in the world could entice me to leave it. I shall find someone acceptable to all the many warring parties in the Seven Kingdoms to act as regent and warn everyone that starting new wars will be resolved in dragonfire. Then I shall return.”

The meeting lasted for a little over half a day, the discussions drifting from one matter to the other. When it was over and everyone filed out, Khiara stayed behind to catch Dany alone.

“You are not alone, My Queen,” the empress of Leng said with severity in her tone. “Leng will stand with you.”

“You have already committed ships and riders to me.”

Khiara bowed with a flourish, her silk robes embellished with lotuses rustling as she moved. “The Goddess-on-Earth was kind enough to gift me with a glass candle. If you need more… if you need anything, I beg of you to tell me.”

“I’m your Queen. It is my duty to fight for you.”

Khiara’s eyes darkened. “I do not hold the religion of R’hllor in high esteem but every couple of thousands of years or so they are right: the night is dark and full of terrors.”

“But the Dawn will come,” Dany said staunchly. “No matter the cost.”

Khiara nodded solemnly. She revered Dany, as many did, but it was the first time her deep, wise eyes were regarding her with admiration. “Will you come to Leng before you sail for Westeros? We can hold one of your women’s courts together.”

Dany smiled genuinely. “Nothing would give me greater joy.” She paused eyeing the other woman carefully. She was taller than her but then who wasn’t? “Tell me, are the ancient ones still believed to reside in the tunnels and labyrinths beneath the ruins in the jungles of Leng?”

“They are. One of my ancestors is said to have consorted with them. She put all the foreigners on the island to the sword many times on their advice.”

“I have outlawed human sacrifice. I don’t think you need to be concerned that I might follow her example.”

“Let the ancient ones sleep in their hide, My Queen.”

Dany pursed her lips, her mind a whirlwind of conflicting thoughts. “It is not those who sleep that concern me but those who dream.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are getting close to Westeros.


	11. Chapter 11

Are you, are you  
Coming to the tree  
Where they strung up a man  
They say who murdered three  
Strange things did happen here  
No stranger would it be  
If we met at midnight  
In the hanging tree  
( _The Hanging Tree)_

_Now_

Arya stood on the bridge of her ship staring at the gray horizons, the cool, wet breeze of the sea spraying on her face. They were entering the Blackwater Bay and soon they would see the coast of King’s Landing come into view. But she felt no elation or excitement at the thought of going home or meeting Bran again soon. The chills cursing through her body had nothing to do with the cold. Doubt gnawed at her. She cursed the Dragon Queen for it. No, that mad woman had meant to play with her mind and Arya wouldn’t let her. She would go to King’s Landing and hug her brother as she intended.

She returned to her cabin with rapid, heavy steps. Above her she heard the cries of seagulls. She raised her head fixing them with her uncertain gaze. She hesitated briefly before slipping into her cabin. There she lay on her bed staring upwards. She had tried it a few time since she had read Daenerys’ odd gift with varying degrees of success. At first nothing happened but then in a sudden burst her body lurched and she was airborne flying in the lead like skies above the ship, the biting wind ruffling her feathers.

She broke away from the other birds and flew to where she instinctively knew that the cost was. When she got close enough to the see the charred ruin of the Red Keep, she saw a few ships in the bay, far fewer than they were during her ill-fated childhood trip with her father to the capital. Some of them had Daenerys Targaryen’s new banner painted on their sails. From the distance she saw Tyrion Lannister and Davos Seaworth on the pier watching the ships. She flew closer. Their faces were marred by worry rather than the passage of time, their clothes black and their expressions grim. Tyrion’s frown was so deep it merged his eye-brows together.

“That one is from Volantis,” Ser Davos said pointing to an elegant galley just throwing anchor. “I heard it said it brings fruit and silk.”

“They might find someone to buy their fruit but their silk is wasted here. The ladies of the capital are selling the silk dresses they already have for food.”

Ser Davos canted his head, his dark expression deepening. “I’m surprised the Dragon Queen still allows ships from her kingdom to come to our shores.”

“The commerce with Westeros is one of the primary sources of the vast wealth of the East,” Tyrion replied, looked like he was about to add something else but ended up saying nothing.

Davos looked at him attentively as if waiting for more then opened his mouth to speak himself, hesitated and closed it again. They watched the sea and the ships in silence for a few moments. Then Davos began talking again.

“I still remember when that raven came from Volantis. They opened the city gates to her without a fight.”

“There are five slaves for every freeman in Volantis,” Tyrion explained. “When they heard she was coming, they rebelled and the tiger cloaks that guard the city joined them. After that, all Daenerys had to do is appear and Volantis was hers. When I was in Volantis, I heard it said that most of the tiger cloaks worship the Lord of Light. Kinvara must have been in her element during that rebellion, preaching about bleeding stars, swords made of light and a day of reckoning. That is if she didn’t start the uprising herself.”

“People want to be free,” Davos pointed out. “The religion of R’hllor might take advantage of that at times but it does not change that fundamental truth.”

“I have to give High Priestess of R’hllor one thing: I don’t know how good she is with religion, but she excels at politics. Small wonder that after Daenerys opened the triarchs elections to everybody not just those who can prove unbroken descent from old Valyria, she was elected one of the three. Apparently she sits on the Queen’s Great Council in that capacity.”

Perhaps Tyrion said something more but Arya felt a force unlike anything she had encountered before press and push against her, trying to force her out of the seagull. She fought back on instinct but it only doubled the efforts of whatever she struggling against. In an instant she was back in her body and her chest was seizing up, her throat closed and her blood boiling. She tried to open her mouth and cry for help but only found herself back in the bird’s body spiraling towards the frothing waves of the Blackwater Bay. She cried out with the seagull’s voice but Tyrion, Davos and the other several people on the docks paid her no heed. She tried to wrench herself away and back to her body but when she arrived she found herself unable to open her eyes and she was shaking so badly, her bed trembled with her. In the fuzzy white stillness inside her head she saw the silhouette of a bird tower over an ocean of white roots rising from a ground of blood and bones. A caw resounded in her ears so loud it was piercing. Three beady, black eyes watched her convulse impassibly.

Then it all stopped. Arya’s eye flew open and she felt wetness around her mouth and on her neck. She felt up her face and her fingers came back stained with white foam. A moment later she heard it: the voice whispering in bizarre, ululating voice. It seemed to originate in the wall by her bed.

“Lady Stark! Lady Stark… Arya, are you well?”

It was the Dragon Queen’s voice. And it did come from the wall by her bed. Without saying a word, Arya sprung out of bed, pushed it to the side and used her dagger to unhinge a few of the boards that made up the wall. Inside she found a tall, gleaming black obsidian candle that burnt with a bright white flame. Arya wondered how it didn’t set the ship on fire. She reached and ran her fingers through the flame: it wasn’t exactly cool but it wasn’t hot, either.

“Is this a glass candle?” Arya asked in dismay. Maester Luwin had taught the Stark children about them but there were supposed to be preciously few left in world. A single one would be invaluable. Regardless of her nefarious agenda, why would Daenerys Targaryen place something that was thought to be priceless on Arya’s ship?

“I told you not to go to King’s Landing. You need to return to Pentos. I have sent a raven there when you left in anticipation of this. They have ships out at sea looking for you. They would protect you until you reach a safe harbor.”

“My brother tried to kill me,” Arya murmured numbly.

“He is not your brother. I don’t think your brother can be reached anymore.”

Arya blinked. “Why would the Three-Eyed Raven want me dead?”

“For the same reason I am trying to keep you alive.”

“You are not gonna tell the reason, aren’t you?” Arya asked.

“There is a saying in Yi Ti: before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves. I owe your family the reveal of a deadly secret but it is not as gratifying as I thought it would be. It’s all rather hollow.”

“Is that why you gave me that book?”

“If you want to stay in Westeros, go to Storm’s End. The castle there is protected against magic. But I urge you to be hasty about it. The Three-Eyed Raven can see anything. You can speak to me anytime you wish, though. Just dribble a little of your blood on the wick of the candle. Amusingly enough I might be the only person to whom you can speak freely. The Raven cannot see me.”

“Why can’t he see you? Wait….”

But the flame died, leaving Arya alone with the feeling of dread wrapping its poisonous tendrils around her. She stood there for a while then she wiped her face and went to instruct her crew to change course for Storm’s End.

# # #

Ser Garth Hightower was tall, taller than Daario, and strongly built, though he was lean rather than bulky. He had dark honey-colored hair reaching to his collar and a short, neatly trimmed beard. He was handsome in an elegant way, his deep, brown eyes holding a melancholic, almost poetic look. He was dressed Westerosi style, in a manner similar to that of Lady Olenna Tyrell. To his left stood a willowy woman with long, golden hair, and fine laughter lines around her perfectly round, warm chestnut eyes. She wore a red velvet gown with a train, her slender arms wrapped in a shimmering gray fabric.

“These are Lord Garth Hightower and his sister, Lady Malora Hightower, the second son and the first daughter of Lord Leyton Hightower, Lord of the Hightower, Lord of the Port, Voice of Oldtown, Defender of the Citadel, Beacon of the South, the rightful Lord Paramount of the Mander, Defender of the Marches, High Marshall of the Reach and Warden of the South.”

Malora Hightower curtsied then remained standing, staring straight at Daenerys, her gaze going beyond the physical.

Her brother, however, knelt in accordance to the Westerosi law and bent his head before the Queen. “Your Grace, House Hightower has never broken faith with House Targaryen. We fought beside your brother at the Trident. Ser Gerold Hightower, the White Bull, was Lord Commander of the Kingsguard for your father. I have come here in my father’s name to bend the knee to the one true queen, Daenerys Stormborn of the House Targaryen, the rightful queen of all Seven Kingdoms, and beg Your Grace for aid against those who seek to oppress us. Our house does not go to war easily, though we have always followed where our siege lords have lead and done so bravely, nor are we thirsty for bloodshed and power. We believe that true power comes from knowledge. We are lovers of the arts and not of the arms. We have welcomed Bran the Broken and the new Lord of the Highgarden and Warden of the South, Lord Bronn, for we have hoped the Realm would be at peace at last. But this peace proved worse than any war. For the first time in millennia the Reach goes hungry. We were forced to send all our food not only to the regions loyal to the Raven but also to the Kingdom of the North that purports to be independent. Our… your people are starving, Your Grace, and their riches are being plundered. Help us, for we are dying!”

Dany stood and descended the two steps leading up to her black throne. Ser Garth, who was watching her from the corners of his eyes, seemed alarmed by her gesture.

“Rise and be well, Ser Garth, we do know kneel on this side of the Narrow Sea,” she instructed before moving to stand in front of his sister.

“Well… am I, Lady Malora?”

A small smile tugged at the corners of Lady Malora’s mouth. Ser Garth, who had just gotten to his feet, shot his sister a pleading look. Clearly she was not doing her part of keeping some sort of prior agreement.

“You are, My Queen,” Lady Malora replied after a brief pause. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off Daenerys. “Until I saw you even I doubted you could be the one but you are…. I know it in the marrow of my bones. Nobody but my father believes me. They all call me the Mad Maid but I knew…. I’ve always known… even since I was a child and the dreams came to me. There is a greater threat than the one sitting on the throne in King’s Landing. The true Great War is yet to come.”

“So is the Dawn,” Dany said firmly. “You can remain in my kingdom for as long as you wish. We do not call your kind mad here. You can study magic and read our books. I will even grant you access to my private collection but right now I am more interested in learning from you. There are many Westerosi books here in Essos but they are not nearly enough.”

Malora nodded eagerly, her eyes glittering with excitement. “I have bought a trunk full of books with me. They are yours, if you want them.”  
  
“Right now I can hardly think of a thing I want more. But first, allow me to put your brother’s mind at ease.” She clasped the other woman briefly on her right shoulder before turning to Ser Garth.

“Rest assured, Ser Garth, your noble mission was a complete success. I am already gathering a fleet that will soon be bound for Westeros and marshaling my forces. When the time is right, I will communicate with you through the glass candles of the Citadel and alert you to march on King’s Landing, while the Hightower fleet will move on Blackwater Bay. Since that cannot come to pass for a few moons more, I will send back with you a few ships filled with grain, fruit and dried and salted meats. My people in the Reach will starve no more. Is this satisfactory to you?”

Ser Garth bowed and made to kneel again but stopped himself at the very last moment. “Your Grace is most gracious. House Hightower and the people of the Reach are eternally indebted to you.”

Dany smiled genially. Ser Garth’s eyes widened. He seemed more than a little star-struck. Dany was fully aware of the impact she had on men and often used it to her advantage. “Now I have heard of the flagship of the Hightower fleet, the four-decked Honor of Oldtown. I should like to visit it and while you have me as your guest perhaps we can discuss how the loss of your bank had come to pass and the restitution I shall make as your queen.”

# # #

The ice dragons looked exactly like Dany’s had had only larger. They were pale like verglas-covered ice which made them visible against the pitch black skies of the winter night. Their eyes glowed from afar like blue crystals twinkling with malice. Their vast translucent wings that reflected the darkness surrounding them flapped around and above Winterfell, their cries sharp and chilling like the breaking of ice. They blew dry frost so cold that it made stone crack and splinter.

Jon stood and watched from a distance as the ice dragons rotated above his home breathing living frost on it and making the walls that were said to have stood since Bran the Builder crumble and fall to the ground. Sansa had been sending ravens requesting help since the day before when he had arrived together with the willdlings who had survived the punishing trek from the Wall, but it had been far too little, far too late. Nobody could have had the time to answer. They themselves had barely had the time to evacuate the castle.

Memories tumbled through his mind quickly as he watched Winterfell fall in more ways than one. He had known few moments of happiness growing up there rejected and scorned by Lady Catelyn, mocked by Sansa and knowing he didn’t have the right to call himself the son of the only father he had known. But there had been blissful moments too: running through the godswood, teaching Bran to shoot an arrow, cradling Rickon on his knee when the lady of the house could not see him, making Arya smile, listening in on the lessons Maester Luwin taught the Stark children, racing on horseback with Robb, holding Ghost for the first time. Jon collapsed to his knees in the thick snow, despair washing over him in a long, suffocating tide. At his side Ghost howled, his muzzle pointed upwards.

“Come, King Crow,” Mother Mole said behind him. “The dead have no need of your tears but the living could use your strength.”

# # #

Lord Tyrion entered the quarters of the Lord Commander of the Kingsguard finding Brienne and Pod there as expected.

“Ser Brienne,” he greeted inclining his head. “Pod.”

“My Lord,” Brienne said guardedly.

He locked eyes with her pleading with his gaze that he played along. If she didn’t, they would disappear as did many a servant, mummers who joked about the king and knights and nobles who spoke against him. When one saw everything and knew everyone’s dirty secrets, there was never a shortage of men who were willing to do anything to keep said secrets hidden.

“I have just realized,” Tyrion started. “That I have been remiss in giving you the map of the tunnels under the city. The Commander of the Kingsguard would undoubtedly have need of it. Treat it gently. It has been handed to me by my late friend, Varys.”

Brienne nodded, realization dawning in her eyes. “Thank you, My Lord. Your diligence is appreciated.”

“Would you like a drink, My Lord?” Pod offered.

Tyrion shook his head. “No, thank you, Pod. I prefer to drink in my own chamber where I can pass out directly on the bed. I shall take my leave now. Lord Commander… Pod….”

Tyrion closed the door in his wake and started down the corridor with a sigh. If anyone would ever be able to write freely again and if that somebody ever wrote the history of his life, he had a suspicion that of all the awful deeds he had committed making Bran the Broken king would be counted as his worst.

# # #

The light of the torch cast uncertain shadows on the tunnel walls as Brienne advanced towards the kernel beneath King’s Landing’s godswood. Brienne had never thought she would know such fear, pervasive and constant, like ice trickling down in the blood. Nothing compared to it, not even battling White Walkers and living corpses. If a man came at her with a sword, she would fight and protect herself. But how could one guard against a pair of eyes that followed your every step and your every word during the waking hours as well as at night? How would one live with the knowledge that you might not be safe even within your thoughts? And what did one do when the man responsible for all these things was the king you were sworn to protect?

He thought of Jaime and his tale of how he had killed the Mad King. Grief surged through her, running parallel to doubt and horror. Was she to be a Kingslayer too? What if it wasn’t true? What if it was all malicious rumors? She would have had an easier time believing it if there was such a thing as gossip anymore. But King’s Landing had turned into a city of silence where people feared talking and often ran away unaware that they had nowhere to go for the Raven’s sight and hearing stretched far, too far to be outrun.

She had started suspecting when the High Septon who had protested the planting of the weirwood trees had vanished without a trace but had quickly dismissed such thoughts as folly and treason. But then the builders working on the fast rising White Keep, a smaller and more modest castle built lower than the ruined Red Keep, had begun to disappear as well. Back then there still had been whispers and people had taken to talking. Then they went missing too. And King’s Landing had slowly started to transform into a city of fearful ghosts scurrying about furtively searching for the meager food that was left. The only beings that thrived were the weirwood that grew fast and plentiful, unbothered by the snows of a winter that never seemed to end and the decaying human life around them.

Brienne nearly slipped on something. She pointed her torch downwards and saw the trickling red liquid. Dread splintered up her spine. She moved cautiously lighting her way with the torch. It wasn’t long before she saw it. There were bodies everywhere, some reduced to skeletons, others in varying states of decay and some even seeming still alive. Slim, white roots wrapped around them holding them up as if in chains. There were bodies of men and women, young, old and some even children. Every now and then there were tangled knots of human entrails strung between the roots. Blood trickled to the floor in steady, slow droplets. And where a patch of flesh could be seen the roots were plucked in, invading the bodies of their victims.

A low, whimper like noise rattled from her left. She turned around slowly and saw a boy no older than twelve with ashen face and dead eyes held in the fatal embrace of the weirwood roots. His lips resembled those of a corpse but they were moving albeit almost soundlessly. Brienne thought she could make out the shape of the word _help._ Her vision fuzzy with tears she raised her sword to cut him free but the clatter of rapidly approaching feet halted her. She swung around ready for battle and stopped herself from beheading Pod at the very last moment.

“Ser Brienne,” he started, his voice raspy and sounding out of breath. “You must come at once. The city is under siege.”

Then he saw the carnage going on around them and screamed, his horror echoing in the tunnels.

Brienne lifted her sword again and cut down the boy. As she slashed through the roots, they made a sound much like a human wail. “Under siege? By whom?”

“Someone with dragons,” Pod replied helping her prop up the boy against the tunnel wall.

“Here,” Brienne said. “Help me cut them all down. I reckon the King will be too busy with the attack to pay us any heed.” She paused as they untangled an old woman from a particularly well knotted core of roots. “Why didn’t we have any warning about an impending attack?”

“I don’t think anyone wanted to warn us.”

“But he sees everything!”

“Everything but this apparently.”

# # #

Tyrion sat on the steps leading up to the modest, wooden throne of King Bran the Broken. The King sat unresponsive on the throne, his eyes milky white. There were white cloaks all around the room and outside the White Keep the bells rang loudly to signal surrender. There was nothing else they could have done. They didn’t have much forces outside the City Watch and even if they had had, they were surrounded, anyway. A large army had been spotted approaching from land and Tyrion believed it was the Hightowers. What little fleet they had left had been lost to the Dornish when they rebelled. Bronn had taken a sizable loan from Volantis to build another one only to lose it in an incursion to stop the pirating activities of the Iron Islands. Needless to say, the pirating of the Ironborn continued to this day. It didn’t matter. It was no longer Tyrion’s problem. Neither was the Eire that mostly ignored the Crown and acted as if they were independent fully aware that with so many other kingdoms rebelling and the army blocked in a senseless, pointlessly long war in the Riverlands, no retribution would be coming their way. The Stormlands seemed to be starting to imitate them as well, Gendry Baratheon surprising everyone. It probably helped that was where Ser Davos had disappeared too three moons ago.

“If we’re gonna roast alive, I’d be damned if I’m gonna die holding my tongue,” Bronn said. He stood only a few feet away with a look of condemnation on his face. “Of all the shit ideas you’ve had, making him king was the shittiest.”

Tyrion sighed. “I almost wish I had been drunk when I did it.”

“Nobody has ever been that drunk,” Bronn quipped.

The screech of the dragon was so loud and close it made the walls tremble. Bronn shrugged.

“Goodbye, my friend. It sure wasn’t a pleasure at the end.”

Tyrion was about to return the sentiment when the door was broken through. As it shattered it revealed a mix of Unsullied, Second Sons and figures wearing black, hooded cloaks with red lacquer masks covering their faces. The only one who didn’t belong was Ser Garth Hightower in a full suit of Westerosi style armor. The white cloaks went for their swords. Tyrion stood. He wanted to die on his feet at least.

“Easy, boys,” Bronn cautioned and Tyrion wasn’t sure if the meant the Kingsguard of the invaders. “The City surrendered.”

The newcomers parted to reveal a diminutive figure clad in the most spectacular armor Tyrion had ever seen. The steel was black and displayed intricate patterns and whorls. Even the helmet had them. Valyrian steel, Tyrion realized, awed despite himself. On the chest scales of red gold formed a three-headed dragon. Red was also the large, wide sword on her left hip. Tyrion knew who it was in an instant.

Daenerys Targaryen removed her helmet shaking free her silvery braids. She looked just like he remembered her, a little less pale than in her last days in Westoros and a lot more healthy, but other than that she seemed unchanged. Tyrion was oddly disappointed.

“Yes,” she said, her voice eerily calm and steady. “The city surrendered and anyone who throws down their swords will be free to go.”

The members of the Kingsguard tossed their swords to the ground without hesitation. Men like Ser Barristan Selmy were hard to come by in this day and age. Bronn cast Tyrion an uneasy look then did the same with a shrug. Tyrion threw down his sword as well for all the good it would do him. Daario Naharis had taken a step closer to his queen. Much like Daenerys, he looked unchanged safe for the pure, unadulterated hatred in his eyes that were fixed on Tyrion.

Daenerys strode towards the throne with slow, measured steps as the Unsullied collected the discarded weapons. Daario, Ser Garth, four Unsullied and one of the shrouded figures moved with her. She stopped right before climbing the steps.

“Try as you might, you cannot warg into dragons,” she said reasonably. “Creatures born of magic cannot be warged into.”

Bran’s eyes reverted to normal. “Why can’t I see you?”

She smiled thinly, chillingly. “You are seeing me at this very moment.” She climbed one step closer to the throne. “Needless to say, we need to talk.”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic will go on hiatus till August 8th when I come back from my holiday. Thank you all for your support.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guess who managed to edit one more chapter before leaving on vacation.

“And there will be no retribution?”

“None,” Dany said firmly. She wanted nothing more than to out and rip out the eyes of the Three-Eyed Raven. But this was bigger than her, more important than her personal tragedy. She needed to be more than just the beast howling inside of her, scratching and biting to get out. Her eyes flicked to the window. Outside the cries of the dragons had grown vicious. They were picking up on her agitation.

“Why?”

“The First Men and the Andals killed the Children of the Forest and cut down their weirwood trees. They pushed them into the North and then they took even that from them. Now they are seeking retribution. If I seek retribution for your retribution, when will it end? When we are all dead and there will be nobody left to avenge or want vengeance for?”

“Westeros belonged to those who sang the songs of the earth and to the giants long before the First Men came. We did not seek to chase them away but they struck us all the same. They killed us with their bronze blades and when we finally made peace with them, the Andals followed and they started killing us with iron. This is the final hour of our long dwindling. That last of the giants died before the walls of Winterfell, the great lions have been slain, the last of the unicorns will soon pass from this existence in Skagos, the mammoths are down to their last hundred, only the direwolves will endure but not for long. In your world of castles and cities there is no room for any of us anymore. For the longest time we have been sad and sung our sad songs and wailed but then _they_ returned…. we remembered that men would not be sad. Men would hate and seek revenge.”

Dany was suddenly glad she had ordered to be left alone with him despite the protestations her decision had engendered.

“I understand! The Starks will not understand. The North will not understand. Jon Snow will not understand. But I do! I know what it means to be the last of your kind, to watch those nearest and dearest to your heart die and for all your power, be powerless to stop it. I know what it means to feel a grief so immense, so suffocating, you want nothing more than to inflict it upon the rest of the world. But it will not help! It will only make everything worse. It will not bring the dead back to life. Blood will not fill the hole they left behind.”

He looked away. The grief etched onto his profile was hard to miss. Whatever he was felt pain like humans did. He just hadn’t had a reason to feel it in her presence until then. After a pause he turned his eyes to her. They were now filled with a new understanding. “What do you want?”

She smiled ruefully. “It’s not a matter of what I want but of what I am duty bound to do. And I duty bound to talk to them. To reforge the old alliance. We could meet the dawn together.”

It was his turn to smile. “There can never be any dawn for those you call children. Regardless of how this war ends, we will be gone anyway before long. Why should we care what happens to those who have killed us?”

“My people have not killed you!”

“No, but they have killed many others!”

“And how many have you killed? I know what sustenance the weirwood trees require. I know the First Men offered them human sacrifices. I know they still clean their bloody blades between their roots in the North. Nobody’s hands are bloodless. Nobody’s blameless. We are all guilty of something or the other!”

“No!” he enunciated stubbornly.

Dany stood. “Let me simplify this for you then. You think you have nothing left to loose? You think that you will die anyway regardless of the outcome of the Great War but that your memory will endure? You are wrong! It will not! Bloodstone is poison, slow for all living things, but immediate for the weirwood trees. I will rain fire and bloodstone from above on every weirwood tree in Westeros. The great root system that has run beneath the feet of the living since the birth of the Dawn Age will wither and die. Your memory will fade. If men fall, your remembrance will perish with us! Now stand. Bran Stark might not be able to walk but I know that you can.”

He stood as he was bid eyeing the door only briefly. A ruckus had erupted on the other side.

“You will have to journey North,” he said.

“I will anyway. I take it that none of the ravens requesting help have made it far.”

His gaze darkened. “No.”

“Is there anyone still alive in the North?”

“Jon Snow and some of the wildlings live still. They are heading towards White Harbor. They sent ravens requesting aid and ships to evacuate. They think the Lords of the Vale and I will surely come.”

“A fooldhardy belief! It is no matter. I will escort you to the weirwood trees and you will tell those who sing the song of earth we will meet at Moat Cailin as well as explain to the them the consequences of a refusal.”

His gaze became distant and aloof again. “We tried to hold back the First Men there and when we failed we flooded the Neck and filled it with bogs and swamps. When the First Men saw the power of the greenseers they were afraid and sued for peace that would eventually result in the Pact.”

“Well then, it will be a meeting rife with historical significance,” she commented dryly her eyes turning to the door that for a moment or two rattled. “Stay here,” he instructed him.

In the hallway she found two Unsullied and two Second Sons barely holding back a disheveled looking Ser Brienne of Tarth. There was blood on her hands and on her white cloak.

“Ironically enough, it is not you she wants to kill,” Daario observed.

“The king… he’s not a man. He’s a monster,” Brienne raged. “You don’t know what he did.”

Dany didn’t hide a wince in time. “I know!” She turned to spare a glance to the Three-Eyed Raven standing in front of his fallen throne before she closed the door. “Watch him,” she instructed Quaithe and Kinvara who stood to the side with half of her Council of Maeges.

She didn’t wait for a confirmation before she turned back to Brienne. “I’m sorry, Ser Brienne, but I cannot allow you to do this… not now and perhaps not for a very long time. For the sake of us all. You and your friend… I’m sorry, squire there, are free to go. Nobody will harm you. You have my word as a Queen. Unless you wish to stay and fight for the living. They need your sword more than the dead ever will.”

Brienne settled down somewhat. “The White Walkers are gone.”

Dany raised an eyebrow. “Are they?”

“Yes, they are,” Brienne’s squire stressed.

“You were sworn to Lady Sansa Stark of Winterfell, weren’t you, Ser Brienne? Right now she needs your help most of all. How long has it been since you last received a raven from the North?”

Brienne paled.

“Haven’t you ever wondered why?”

“Pod and I won’t be hurt?” Brienne insisted.

“Absolutely not but you must not interfere. I will handle the Three-Eyed Raven myself.”

“Who is it that we made king?” Brienne asked with obvious trepidation in her voice.

“Vengeance made flesh. How well did that turn out?”

Brienne lowered her head. “I will not meddle with the King… with the Three-Eyed Raven. You have my word.”

Dany nodded. “Very well. Release her.” She waited until Brienne was let go. “Your weapons will be returned to you together with your new ones.” She switched her attention to Daario. “Walk with me,” she commanded.

He followed without hesitation. Behind her she heard Brienne ask why she needed new weapons and Pod wonder why Danny hadn’t asked them to bend the knee.

“I need you to find me a book,” she said when they were out of the earshot of anyone from Westeros. “Start at the quarters at the man who calls himself Archmaester, Samwell Tarly. Don’t put anyone to the sword by put Tarly under guard. His… truth be told, I don’t know what she is to him, but the woman you find with him and her children are to be allowed to leave and go wherever they wish.”

He nodded his understanding. “What’s the book?”

# # #

Dany found Tyrion as she always did: in the process of getting drunk.

“I would have hoped you would want to face at least death sober.”

He raised his cup. “This is an exquisite Arbor gold vintage. I would hate for someone else to get to enjoy it. Pour you a drink? I promise it’s not poisoned. I would not foul such a wine in this fashion.”

She shook her head no as settled her helmet on his table then took a cautious seat opposite him. Sitting down in armor was not easy or comfortable. The tip of Lightbringer clattered as it scratched on the floor. “I no longer partake,” she said coolly pushing through the knot of mixed feelings she had for him.

“A side-effect of your resurrection, I presume.”

“More like a side-effect of my usage of magic. Drinking and sorcery don’t mix.”

He raised his wine glass to her. “Well, then my condolences. Not that I’m in any hurry to meet my demise but may I ask why we are here in my own quarters speaking instead of standing outside beside a dragon?”

“I have thought about it. After all, strictly speaking, I do not need you alive and you more than deserve death but then dragonfire burns so hot it will all be over rather quickly. And you’ll be spared the horror awaiting us all. You will be free, beyond fear and doubt, and frankly you do not deserve it. I want you to see what you wrought. I want you to stand on the edge of the falling world and know that at least in part you are to blame. I want you to see the bodies of those your King sacrificed to make his trees bloom. I want you to see who the creature you made King truly is. I want you to go with me North and stare Death in the eye and know that it would have been a preferable outcome. I want you to fight in the war to come for we need every man we can get, even a treacherous Lannister such as yourself.” She stood and grabbed her helmet.

“What makes you think I’ll fight for you? For the queen of ashes who burnt King’s Landing to the ground.”

She glowered at him from the door, only guilt keeping her ire in check. Apparently, guilt was good for something, after all. “I must pay for my crime, Lord Tyrion, and you must pay for yours. By the way, Kinvara wishes to save your soul and bring you to the side of the Lord of Light. So I gave her leave to preach to you all the way to the North.”

He grimaced and then took a large gulp of his wine. “A subtle yet most vicious torture, My Queen, I must commend you.”

“I’m not your queen,” she snapped, her temper getting the better of her all of the sudden. “You and your worthless, scheming house broke all the vows they ever took, Kinslayer. I will not have you even if you swore to me. Your word means less than nothing.”

He winced again. “Poor Jon Snow or should I say Aegon Targaryen! I shudder to imagine what you must have planned for the rightful heir to the throne if you ever catch him alive.”

She scoffed, her heart lurching painfully when she heard both names. “Rightful heir? Look outside your window, My Lord. Do you see that massive fleet, the equally massive army and the fifteen dragons flying above the capital? A capital that fell within hours to me twice. That’s my claim to the throne and it’s unassailable. Or I could just buy Westeros from the Iron Bank. They have been offering it to me at a discount.” She sneered derisively before addressing the two Unsullied by the entrance. “Find out what it was that the former Lord Commander of the Kingsguard discovered then take him there to see it as well. Make sure he doesn’t hurt himself.”

# # #

Dany could easily see why Ser Baelor Hightower, the heir to his house, was nicknamed Brightsmile. He was even taller than his brother, Ser Garth, and almost shockingly handsome. His hair was darker than that of his brother but just as long and streaked with white at his temples, which only served to make him look distinguished. He was dressed in a splendid, perfectly polished suit of armor. His breastplace bore two coat of arms: the tower with fire on top of House Hightower and the three-headed dragon of House Targaryen.

“The city is yours, My Queen, and so is the Reach and House Hightower,” Ser Baelor proclaimed solemnly.

His sister Malora who had returned with Dany from New Valyria rolled her eyes. Sitting on the lowest step to the new throne of the Six Kingdoms, Dany shot her a quick, placating smile. Formalities had their place, after all. “Thank you, Ser Baelor. Your loyalty shall not be forgotten.”

He looked from her to the throne, his brow creasing in confusion.

“I shall head North next,” she continued. “I would bide Ser Garth to accompany me with a small host. The thick of your army will remain here while you will rule over King’s Landing in my name. You will secure the city and the rest of the Crown’s Land, clearing it of brigands and their ilk, and distribute the food I have brought with me from Essos.”

Ser Baelor bowed with great elegance. “You honor me beyond belief, Your Grace. House Hightower shall continue to serve you to the best of our efforts.”

Dany nodded with a polite smile. “I thank you, Ser. The first thing I shall request of you is to send a raven to Dorne. Tell Princess Arianne of House Martell that the Queen falls down on her knees and begs her forgiveness for the way Prince Rhaegar betrayed his one true wife, Elia Martell. He had dishonored himself, his house and cast the Realm into a chaos we are all still suffering from. Tell her I grieve with her for Elia and her two children, that they have not been forgotten and that I will right the wrong my brother had done to them. Assure her that Daenerys Stormborn of House Targaryen recognizes but one Aegon Targaryen and that is the first, trueborn son of Elia of the loyal House Martell and Rhaegar Targaryen. I wish to be no quarrel between me and her and I mean only to restore the good faith between our houses because I believe in the vows the proud House Martell took.”

Ser Baelor and Ser Garth exchanged a quick look. “We have heard about the malicious rumors regarding your brother, Prince Rhaegar, and Lyanna of House Stark,” Ser Garth spoke first.

“My honored father, Ser Leyton Hightower, who is your faithful servant, has searched the archives of the Citadel himself,” his older brother continued. “It pains me to say this as a member of House Hightower, who has always been a patron of the Faith of the Seven, that the High Septon of that time has been bribed to annul the perfectly valid marriage between Prince Rhaegar and his wife, Elia Martell. After all, how can a marriage that has been consummated and already produced two heirs be declared invalid?” Ser Baelor produced a sheet of paper which he then proceeded to tear in half. “This is a sad mistake and a less than proud day for both House Hightower and for the Faith. For this we beg your forgiveness.”

Dany smiled graciously. That had been predictably easy. When confronted with an heir with dragons, armies, food and money and one who had none of those things, the people quickly realized who the rightful monarch was. “There is nothing to forgive, My Lords, I assure you.”

Ser Baelor bowed once more. Ser Garth grinned at her. Malora merely looked bored. The other notable lords and ladies of the capital who had rushed in to pledge his loyalty to their new Queen broke into enthusiastic exhortations of her mercy and graciousness, clearly hoping for some of both as well. Only the Unsullied who acted like her guards remained impassible. She exchanged a pointed look with Grey Worm who stood to her left.

While she patiently waited for the clatter to die out, she noticed Daario slinking in holding a bundle of sorts. Dany stood up immediately. “If you will excuse me, my lords and ladies, I am tired after the trip and the recent battle. I shall retire now and we will continue with the all the necessary arrangements in the morning.”

As she crossed the throne room, Grey Worm and two Unsullied trailing after her, she noticed the good lords and ladies craning their necks to get a better look at her. She saw disappointment, uncertainty and fear on most faces. Dany had an idea of how she looked even if she no longer wore her armor. What she did wear were her black, riding leathers, Dothraki style braids, and Lightbringer on her hip. The pummels of her Shadowmen style, black dragonglass daggers rose above her lower back. She guessed her appearance failed to alleviate any leftover concerns from her once burning this very same city. Normally she would have been more placating but she was pressed for time. Things being what they were, all she could do was leave the long-suffering capital in the capable hands of the Hightowers and move on to the real reason for which she had come to Westoros. These people might not be aware of it now but they would be glad she didn’t look more peaceful soon enough. She would have liked to hope for the opposite but the Others were too close for that to be a viable option.

# # #

Daario tossed the well worn, leather bound two-tome book on the table. They had locked themselves in the nearest empty chamber and had the Unsullied guard the door to make sure they would not be interrupted.

“A Chronology of the Commanders of the Night’s Watch. A dull read, I’m certain, not nearly as interesting as this.” He held up a newer looking book with a dark red cover adorned with golden letter. “A Song of Ice and Fire by Archmaester Samwell Tarly.”

Dany opened the first tome of the Chronology. “I’m not interested!”

“That’s what you think! But this is a fine work of history. I would not wish to deprive you of it so I will read to you a few words.” He cleared his throat dramatically. “ _The valiant Aegon Targaryen, the true heir to the Iron Throne, slew the Mad Queen Daenerys of the Ashes in battle_ …. You wound me, My Queen. You didn’t tell you had a previous trainer in sword fighting.”

“I could swing a sword without cutting myself before your expert teachings,” she pointed out opening the book that truly held her appeal.

“Yes, but apparently you could hold your own against the most skilled swordman in Westeros before he bravely defeated you or so this book claims.”

Dany turned the page in her own book. There was an entry on the twelfth Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch and one on the fourteenth but nothing on the thirteenth. As if he hadn’t existed! She leaned back in her chair watching Daario read more of Samwell Tarly’s lies.

“Now can I kill him?” he asked after a while.

Dany blinked as if waken from a dream. “Who? Tarly? No, he’s nobody. He’ll never set foot in the Reach again after being made an archmaester with no links on his chain and keeping that woman when maesters are supposed to be celibate”

“She said they are married.”

“They are? He really did everything in his power to provoke the wrath of the Citadel.”

Daario turned her tome towards himself. “They forgot one of these Lord Commanders,” he remarked. “Where is number thirteen?”

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: a certain, much anticipated reunion.


	13. Chapter 13

Really too late to call, so  
We wait for  
Morning to wake you, that's all we got  
To know me as hardly golden  
Is to know me all wrong, they were

At every occasion, I'll be ready for the funeral  
Every occasion, once more, it's called the funeral  
Every occasion, know I'm ready for the funeral  
Every occasion, oh, one billion-day funeral

I'm coming up only to show you down, for  
I'm coming up only to show you wrong

To the outside the dead leaves, they're on the lawn  
Before they died, had trees to hang their hope

(Band Of Horses, _The Funeral_ _)_

Failure was a foreign concept to Jon Snow. Despite his status as bastard and the way people had looked at him because of it, he had pretty much excelled at everything he had tried his hand at. He had mastered every weapon he had ever touched. Maester Luwin had allowed him to listen in on the lessons he had imparted to the Stark children and Jon had learnt faster and better than any of them with the exception of perhaps Arya. He had thrived as a man of the Night’s Watch despite the many roadblocks on his path. Not even death had slowed him down.

Now, however, as he stood on the pier of White Harbor staring into the thick mists rising above the gray-green, foam tinged waves of the Bite, he felt the abject taste of failure on the back of his tongue. It was rather dark for midday, the skies above lead like and oppressive feeling. The White Walkers and their ilk were closing in on the city, he could tell. He could feel it in the marrow of his bones. His gloved hand tightened on the pommel of Longclaw. The ghostly white towers of the city lay behind him, their rounded roofs reminding him painfully of Winterfell. He closed his eyes briefly. Winterfell was lost, the ancestral Stark home that had stood for millennia fallen to the ancient enemy that never failed to return.

He had thought that he had known the North and that he had known winter but in the end, Ygritte had been right. He had known nothing. Neither had the Free Folk, for all their boasting. True Winter and the True North were unknowable for neither belonged to men. They belonged to the creatures they called White Walkers and their vassals and they would not stop coming. That at least, Jon Snow knew! A little late maybe, but he knew now all too well.

Gritting his teeth, he turned to Lord Manderly. “We have sent many ravens to the South, to King Bran, and they all went unanswered. The North is on its own.”

Lord Manderly scowled. “Aye. We always are….” The other man seemed uncertain as to how to address him, though his behavior towards him was respectful to a fault. Sansa was still Queen in the North and the liege lady of House Manderly. But she was in the Lord’s White Castle, in comfort and warmth. It was Jon who was down there, in the port and in the cold, staring into the uncertain future.

“We need to organize the defense of the city and if that fails, to evacuate White Harbor and retreat to Widow’s Watch to bring the people to safety. Do you think Lady Lyessa Flint will welcome us?”

Wyman Manderly didn’t comment on the freedoms Jon was taking for himself despite his sister’s position. “House Flint has always been loyal to House Stark. Lady Lyessa’s son was one of the personal guards of the Young Wolf. He died with him at the Red Wedding. Aye, she will open the gates to us.”

Jon nodded. “Then we must make haste. They will be upon us soon enough. I have no doubt your bannermen are brave, My Lord, but White Harbor is too exposed. I don’t know how long we can hold it.” His gaze was drawn to the crumbling black walls of the Wolf’s Den towering over the lively city. Ironically, the Stark king who had built it was also named Jon. Wolf’s Den was a prison now. “Are there many prisoners in Wolf’s Den, My Lord?”

Manderly shook his head no.

# # #

It was hardly the first since the return of the White Walkers that Jon woke up with the taste of his blood in his mouth and the persistent memory of his paws sinking into the thick pelt of fresh snow. He knew enough to realize the dreams were not dreams and that these sensations didn’t belong to him. But that couldn’t be, could it? He was no warg. Bran was the warg. Bran who ignored their pleas for help. Why would he do that? Jon could fathom Bran’s lack of response to him but to Sansa as well? Why would her brother refuse to aid her?

Jon untangled himself from the soft linen sheets of the feather bed Lord Manderly had so graciously provided for him. Sleeping on something so comfortable felt alien to him. He was used to the hard ground beneath his scratchy bedding that smelled of sweat and animal fur. The large room, the many candles and the horn of ale by his bed were odd too. He ran a hand through his hair, combing his tangles, before he started to dress.

He felt guilty for it but ever since they had encountered the White Walkers again, he had been strangely rejuvenated. His nightmares had receded somewhat and his days were less gloomy. He had thought he was tired of fighting but the lack of it had been worse somehow, making him feel restless and purposeless. Perhaps it was because now he had less time to worry and prod at his many regrets, pain and causes for anger. Before he and Free Folk had reached Winterfell, he had been busy keeping them alive and trying to lose as few children as possible in the punishing trek through the snow. Then ever since Winterfell had fallen, he had been shouldering the additional weight of Sansa and her people too. As much as her court flattered her by calling her the Red Wolf, Sansa was the queen of summer, peace and plentiful harvests, her blood more Tully than Stark.

Sansa was not built to go to war with the dead, even if she had had the necessary army, which she didn’t, given how depleted the resources of the North were. She was not meant to run through the wind swept snows towards an uncertain salvation. Maybe Sansa would have made a decent queen in balmier times but that was not the star they had been born under. The respect of the surviving Northern lords was waning as it became more and more obvious that Sansa could not handle wartime decisions. The years of hunger could not have helped her position either. Jon sensed Sansa and he were on a collision course and he did not look forward to the confrontation one bit, especially not with the dark feelings he had been harboring towards her ever since she had traded his confidence for a crown. She had her crown now for all the good it would do her. The White Walkers could kill her all the same.

He rode into port to find Ghost exactly where he knew he would. He dismounted and petted his good boy on the head.

“What is it, Ghost? What do you see?”

Red eyes glowed at they fixed on him. Jon scrutinized the white mist still hovering over the bay despite the dark of the chilly winter night. He saw no ships coming in. According to Lord Manderly, the North’s lack of money had all but ruined their commerce so the port had seen little use in recent years.

Jon frowned and waited for a while, his breath visible in the freezing air. Nothing happened, the city eerily quiet around him. He scratched Ghost absently behind his ears, recalling Qhorin Halfhand’s old warning that nobody could truly know a wild thing.

“Let’s go, Ghost,” he said. “Nobody’s coming.”

The direwolf threw his head back and howled. Jon paused, still gaping hopefully at the sea but again nothing changed. No ship was forthcoming. He glanced to the lighthouse. No warning fire had been lit. He sighed chiding himself for holding onto impossible expectations. Whatever his reasons, Bran wasn’t sending them aid. They were on their own.

When he chanced a peek at the waves beyond the docks, he realized Bran could no longer send them help, even if he wanted to. He lowered his torch to get a better look and his worst fears were instantly confirmed. At least at the shore the sea was beginning to freeze over, the waves solidifying into a pale mass. His hand clenched on the torch, understanding Ghost’s behavior now. The wind was cutting deeper at the skin of his face too. They were coming and they were close.

# # #

Dany turned and twisted on the softness of her feather bed, her sleep—when it came—fitful at best. Sleeping in a bed had always been strange to her. Growing up begging on the streets of Free Cities, she had slept on the pavement on more than one occasion. Living with the Dothraki, she had learned to sleep on horseback. In the Shadow and during all the ensuing years, she had slept curled up on Drogon. Though she knew it was perfectly safe to sleep on her flying son, it would make her troops nervous to realize their queen rested in what appeared to be such a precarious position.

In her dreams she smelled smoke and burning flesh and heard the pained cries of her many, many innocent victims. They called to her and cursed her but she had a heard time making out the words because of the deafening toll of the bells. And in the fire she saw the face of Jon and her chest ached so fiercely she woke up in cold sweat. When she eventually fell asleep again, the dark song of Stygai, which she could always hear even over the distance separating her from the Heart of Darkness, did little to soothe her.

A firm knock on the door startled her awake for good. She blinked the sleep from her eyes and wiped a hand over her sweat drenched brow. She got up, put on a robe and lit her purple glass candle before inviting in Ornela. Ornela ran her household, advised her and often served as her liaison to Vaes Dothrak or sometimes even the Lazhareen.

Ornela bowed and stepped aside allowing in an elder Dothraki woman carrying a large laver filled with steamy water.

“Khaleesi, it is time,” Ornela announced.

# # #

The screeches of the ice dragons were like sharp like rupturing frozen water. The Free Folk and the escaped defenders of Winterfell had gotten used to them somewhat but Lord Manderly’s men and other Stark bannermen that had hastily gathered were visibly shaken. When the dead had first besieged Winterfell, the battle had been dire but at least, they had been mostly safe from the air, having two dragons to defend them while the Night King only had one. But now they had no dragons. Instead the enemy’s beasts rained down stone-cracking frost on them from above.

From bellow the enemy kept coming in an expertly organized fashion. The dead that this new kind of White Walkers managed to rise as well formed the center of the assault while their icy lords composed unbreakable lines that swarmed Wolf’s Den from the flanks. Jon could not help but admire the simple genius of this strategy. Again he was taken aback by the difference between these creatures and those who had once attacked Winterfell. The Night King for all his sophistication had never come up with anything similar. He cursed Sam, cursed the thousands of years since the last Long Night, cursed his own lack of vigilance and cursed all those who had forgotten so much. But above all, he cursed the knife he had plunged into Dany’s heart. What he wouldn’t give for her atop Drogon right now? Mad or sane, it made no difference. Or perhaps it did. It made all the difference between life and death.

He had planned the organized resistance at Wolf’s Den as a distraction in order to give the women and children time to escape to Widow’s Watch but now doubted the success of his ploy. What if this obviously cunning enemy who recognized Valyrian steel on site had anticipated his move? He and Lord Manderly had seen to it that the ancient, half ruined castle had been fortified the best it could be given their limited time and bore down within its walls. Jon would never repeat of mistake he had made at the battle of Winterfell by meeting the dead out in the open.

The castle, such as it was, represented the biggest strategic advantage they had. The problem was that as Aegon the Conquerer had proven, no castle could withstand an attack from the air. Not at the rate the White Walkers’ dragons blew down molten ice upon them. Standing on the battlement, his hair wiping around his face, heavy with prickle icicles, he instructed the archers as they aimed upwards at the dragons. So far not one arrow had made a fatal dent. He glanced downward through one of the gaps in the parapet. The dead were beginning to climb up the walls. They didn’t have the numbers to push them back. If he wanted to escape with at least a tiny force so that the runaway civilians wouldn’t be left entirely unprotected, he needed to order a retreat and be quick about it. With a little luck they would be able to leave the castle through the side of the city and make a run for it.

“Fall back,” he yelled, raising one arm.

That very moment he heard a sound he had long since given up hope of ever perceiving again. He would know that cry anywhere for it was not quite a cry but more like a song, melodic in its thundering intensity. It had always called to him, alighting every fiber of his being. A dragon and not one made of ice. He pressed a hand to his forehead to act as a shield and peered into the leaden storm clouds above his head. Amid the white of the thick falling flakes he thought he saw a giant dark shadow. Drogon! Could he dare hope?

If he died and was brought back a thousand times over, Jon would remember what followed down to the tiniest, most insignificant of details, especially as it all seemed to unfurl slowly as if in a dream. He saw the opalescent ice dragon sweep down towards him, its aim unerring, its rider brandishing a long, translucent sword. He saw his own death in the glowing blue eyes of the beast. From a corner of his eye he glimpsed Tormund diving for him, his mouth opening, though his scream failed to reach Jon’s ears. At least, the archers were retreating as instructed. Jon drew Longclaw, though he knew it would be all but useless against the frozen torrent that was sure to spill soon from the ice dragon’s monstrous muzzle. As if on cue, the dragon open his mouth.

Then everything changed again. A black shadow slammed into the ice dragon and it hit the wall to Jon’s left with such force that it fissured, stones tumbling down to the ground in large blocks. The head landed on the end of the battlement, one of Drogon’s legs pressing down on the other dragon’s neck, keeping it trapped. Drogon blew fire on the White Walker and the creature shrieked as it cracked and splintered under the hot deluge.

Jon took off running towards the ice dragon. Riderless or not, it could still throw off Drogon and resume its rampage. If their previous confrontation with the White Walkers had proven anything, it was that dragons were not invincible. And Drogon was but one while the ice dragons were many. Before Jon could reach his intended target, though, another dragon swooped from the skies. At first, Jon had feared it was yet another ice one coming to the aid of his beleaguered comrade, because the newcomer was ashen in color, its wings tinged with a silver gleam. But his rider cut too small of a figure to be a White Walker and the armor he wore was matte black, lacking any reflectiveness. An instant later Jon glimpsed the red scales of the three-headed dragon on the rider’s chest. His heart stuttered. No, it was impossible!

The rider rose atop the gray dragon and jumped straight ahead, lifting a large sword that turned into a sharp, pointed pillar of living flame. It was nothing like the sword Thoros of Myr could light up. The sword was the fire and the fire was the sword, inseparable one from the other. The movement caused the dark helmet to fall from the dragon rider’s head, long, silvery braids spilling on her back. Daenerys Targaryen stabbed the sword of fire into one of the ice dragon’s eyes. The beast gave a pitiful wail and slumped brokenly against the wall it had shattered in its fall. Drogon released it from his grasp and the giant body tumbled over the dead pooling down below.

Daenerys fell through the air but only made it a few feet when Drogon caught her. She landed solidly on his back and pulled a red and black horn from her waist. The sound it produced was blood-curling and Jon winced, every vein and muscle in his body recoiling. He gritted his teeth and bore it, though. He would not be intimidated by the blowing of a horn.

More dragons appeared as if from thin air and pounced on the ones ridden by the White Walkers. Jon signaled the archers back to their posts. They couldn’t aim at the ice dragons now for they risked harming those who had come to help them but they could still do damage to the enemy on the ground. Actual black shadows with the faces of men and women started climbing the walls moments later grabbing at the dead and ripping them to pieces they carelessly then tossed to the ground as if they were nothing more than trash.

“How…?” Tormund asked, his eyes huge and filled with shock.

Jon cast him a forbidding look. “Now it’s not the time for questions.” He rushed back into the bowels of the ancient castle. “Form ranks,” he called to the free folk and northerners he encountered on his way. “After me! We received reinforcements. We’re going on the attack! Attack! Attack!”

Once out in the open, Jon shielded Longclaw and pulled out a large dragonglass battle ax that had been fashioned for him by the Free Folk. It worked better against the dead. With Tormund at his side he carved a path through them aiming for the White Walkers still coming in from the flanks atop their giant, blue-eyed spiders. Fighting alongside literal shadows was strange albeit easy. One could walk right through them but they still were solid enough to pick apart the dead with their bare hands while they hacked at them uselessly.

Unsullied surged from the sides forming a line in the way of the White Walkers, filing through the path Jon’s men and the shadows had cut into the dead. The eunuch soldiers knelt lifting pikes unlike Jon had never seen before. They were mounted on long wooden shafts like those in Westeros but their thick blades were dagger shaped. The first line of spider-mounted White Walkers crashed into the Unsullied only for their beasts to shatter upon impact. Then the Unsullied finished off the rider with their short swords. Jon understood: the blades of the bizarre halberds were made of dragonglass. As he retrieved Longclaw and charged into a thicket of White Walkers, dancing with them with practiced ease, one thought rolled ceasselessly into his head like a copper into an empty basin: Dany had somehow seen this coming. Nothing else could account for this level of preparedness.

The Unsullied broke ranks and formed smaller, square ones holding their shields above their heads as protection against the taller White Walkers. Jon grabbed a shield from a fallen man and gestured for his followers that were without one to do the same. They couldn’t fall into formation like the Unsullied did, not without practice, but even in one-on-one combat, he could see the wisdom of the move. Holding the shield above his head, he charged ahead, slashing at his opponents with Longclaw with precise, determined gestures.

Above him the dragons sang their terrible battle song. Jon glimpsed a few of the White Walkers actually glance to the skies where fire-breathing dragons brought color and brightness to the dull gray and the cold white of winter. He thought he saw them hesitate from the first time he had encountered them at the Fist of First Men and it filled him with grim satisfaction. Another ice dragon tumbled to the ground with a single anguished cry. A horn countered it, sweet and crystalline, unlike the one he had heard Dany blow. The Knights of the Vale?

When he lifted his eyes, he saw no white falcon and crescent moon on a blue field but a strange variation of the Targaryen banner that now had a lemon tree and pale stalks of tall grass added and also a white tower with fire on the top against a gray background. House Hightower! The North owned its salvation to the woman they had betrayed and Jon had killed and to the elusive and distant lords of Oldtown.

The newcomers were a much more familiar sight: armored Westerosi knights atop horses brandishing broad swords. As they advanced on the White Walkers, the latter began to do something Jon had never seen them do ever since the Wall had fallen completely: they started to fall back. Behind him a dragon’s song rose steeply in triumph. He turned just in time to see Drogon land on the castle’s highest tower, the stone creaking plaintively under its massive weight. He had gotten so much bigger since Jon had last seen him. Atop the black dread Jon glimpsed a flash of silver hair. He pushed at a sweat and sleet wet strand of hair that had stuck to his heated forehead. Adrenaline from the battle still thrummed through his veins warring with the tumult in his heart.

Drogon stretched his long, thick neck and opened his mouth, roaring with such force that the skies seemed to threaten to come off their hinges. Then came the eerie, stomach churning echo of Dany’s horn. The dragons above, all fire-breathing now, drifted lower. The Unsullied turned as one and surrounded Jon and his force. The knights of House Hightower rapidly followed their lead. The shadows had disappeared. Once the horn stopped blowing, for a moment or two a deep silence fell on the castle and the former battlefield before it, only the howling of the wind haunting the horizon.

TBC


	14. Chapter 14

Two of her dragons had been injured, though not gravely. She had come to note that the older dragons got, the harder their scales became. Drogon’s were now as hard as stone, of which she was glad. There was no way her last surviving child could be killed like her other two. Some of the dragons she had brought back from the Shadow were older than Drogon so their scales were even harder. There had always been dragons in the Shadow Lands, though the Shadowmen had told her their numbers had been dwindling before the red comet that had heralded the birth of her own dragons. Then the number of hatchings had exploded.

She checked on the wounded dragons, as Grey Worm reported on their losses. Given that this time she had known what she was dealing with and been able to plan accordingly, they had been rather small. Aware she didn’t need to tell Grey Worm what to do for the care of the injured soldiers, she proceeded to give him instructions on how the Northerners they had taken captive were to be treated. Grey Worm nodded, his pinched impression speaking volumes.

She turned from Meraxes, a bulky, red, orange and golden wild dragon to face her loyal battle commander. She took precisely two steps closer to him.

“How are you?” she asked softly. The North brought back painful memories for both of them.

He locked sorrowful eyes with hers. “I’m always at your service, my Queen.”

She clasped a gloved hand on his armored left shoulder. “I’m not asking as your queen, I’m asking as your friend. How are you, old friend?”

Grey Worm looked away, his jaw clenching. He was uncomfortable with expressing emotion, a notion she understood all too well. “I am… overwhelmed. I see her everywhere here, more so than in East. I see her eyes in the snows, her face in the clouds, I hear the wind and think of how she died. I think of how she remained sweet and hopeful despite everything that was done to her.”

Dany took her hand away and nodded. “She was the best of us,” she admitted in a rushed whisper, the breath burning its way through her flesh as it left her lungs and throat. “I miss her every day… every hour… and I see her here too… everywhere. This is why we have to fight! This is why we have win. If we lose and the world falls into darkness, there will be nobody left to remember her.”

He returned her nod, the ghost of tears filling his eyes. Dany stretched up and brushed her lips against the frigid skin of his left cheek. “We will bring the Dawn,” she assured. “We will make sure Missandei of Naath, Grey Worm’s great love and my best friend, will always be remembered!”

A blood-curling scream broke through the moment. Dany and Grey Worm took off running.

It didn’t take them long to identify the source of the yelling. A frail, old woman was cowering before Vhagar who towered over her with his gigantic gauntlet opened. A few Unsullied and some of the small Dothraki guard Dany had brought along with her hovered close by, unsure how to save the poor woman. Dany snatched a whip from one of the Dothraki. She whirled high in the air before cracking it loudly on the ground. Once. Twice. Only the third time did she get the dragon’s attention.

Except for Silverwing, the wild dragons were not as easy as Drogon. Vhagar was the biggest and worst of them all. Dany reached within her to the power of both the shadow and the fire. When Vhagar locked eyes with her she used it to press back against him. Then she slid between him and his intended victim.

“Iōragon ilagon,” she ordered. Magi sang in her as much as it did in him and she used it to her advantage. “Iōragon ilagon!”

She cracked the whip again. Vhagar backed away.

“Sōvegon,” she said.

The dragon lowered his head before he took a few steps away and finally rose up and flew up into the air.

Only then did she turn to the old woman. Grey Worm was helping her to her feet. She was slightly taller than Dany and slender, though upon closer she wasn’t old at all, despite the fact that her long hair was as white as the snows surrounding her. Her face was youthful, however, and Dany doubted she was more than a few years older than herself. She had striking, wide green eyes that were staring at Dany in fear. Dany smiled encouragingly and came closer, dragging the whip behind her.

“Are you alright?” Dany asked kindly.

The woman nodded, her pale lower lip trembling. She was dressed in rags, though cleanly kept. Dany’s heart went out to her even more. She was undoubtedly amongst the lower of the lowerborn. Such people had already suffered enough at her hands in Westeros. She would not perpetuate it!

“I am truly sorry for that. Vhagar can be difficult under the best of times but I do not think he meant more than to frighten you. If you will go with Ornela, she can see that you will be given food and a bed for the night if you wish it.” She gestured to Ornela, adding in Dothraki that she should also give the woman a fur and good clothes. “What’s your name?”

“Tysha,” the woman said, her lips still quivering.

“Tysha, are you a servant at the castle here?”

“Oh no, M’Lady,” she replied. “I live down at the docks. I help the fishermen patch their nets and in return they give me a few of their smallest fish.”

Dany nodded. She had noted efforts had been made to evacuate the city but she had still glimpsed a few of the lowborn running around during the attack from where she had been on dragonback.

“I’m sure you are very handy with a needle in your hand. If you want, Ornela can find you something to do in my household. You will be paid in far more than small fish and you will always have more than enough to eat. I promise none of my dragons will ever bother you again.”

“Thank you, M’lady,” Tysha said uncertainly. “I’m sorry I don’t know how to speak proper…. I have never seen a queen before.”

Dany grinned. Tysha had to be sharp to have put together who she was. “The proper term is Your Grace, but the Dothraki call me Khaleesi. You’ll hear Ornela use it a lot. Others simply refer to me as Mhysa.”

“Mhysa?” The word rolled off Tysha’s tongue in a strong accent. Generally she spoke differently from the highborn Westerosi Dany knew but her inflection was not that of a Northerner, either. “What does it mean?”

“It means _mother_.”

“I think… I will call you Mhysa.”

Dany smiled again.

# # #

_A Month Earlier_

_The shadows come to dance, my lord, dance my lord, dance my lord. The shadows swirl with fire, my lord, and they stay, my lord, stay, my lord. In the night without end where the dead rise, my lord, the dead rise, my lord…._

Arya stiffened, her back going ramrod straight. Her hand slipped to the pommel of Needle. It was just the jester, she reminded herself, only the jester. The poor fool with a feeble mind Gendry had inherited from Stannis Baratheon and found skulking around the halls of the grim, pale grey castle of Storm’s End. Gendry had spoken of Patchface andof all that he had endured with a compassion Arya could not bring herself to share. Despite everything she had witnessed and fought, Patchface made the hair on her head stand on end and her stomach coil uneasily. There just was something about that creature barely resembling a human being that was deeply unsettling. Much to her displeasure, Gendry had laughed off her worries about Patchface.

“He’s just a jester who’s frail of mind and has nowhere else to go. You remember how that’s like, don’t you, Arya? There isn’t nothing dangerous about Patchface.”

She shook her head, pushing such thoughts out of mind, as the echo of the fool’s ominous song faded from the corridor. She raised her hand and knocked on the door. Lord Baratheon opened wearing only his breeches and a long, loose linen tunic.

“Arya?” he said, looking taken aback. Still he stepped to the side allowing her in.

She followed smoothly and walked up to him to place a kiss on his lips. He all but jumped back in reaction, crimson blossoming high on his cheeks.

“Arya… we can’t… this is not….” He paused, swallowed visibly before drawing himself to full length. His eyes swept over the room resting anywhere but on her. “Arya, I don’t know why you are here and I’m not gonna press the issue if you don’t want to tell me. You can stay for as long as you desire. Nobody would bother you. If you like me to hide you, I will. You need only say the word. But I cannot do this anymore. I will not! I have made it perfectly clear that I love you and wish to have a family with you and you have made perfectly clear you have no interest in that. I respect that and you will not hear another word about it from me but I will not be used, either, whenever you feel lonely, uncertain or scared. I am not a balm you apply on a wound, Arya.”

She stared at him as if seeing him for the first. The rejection stung. It was the last thing she expected from him. “Gendry, it’s not like that! I explained to you. Being a lady of a castle is not me!”

His gaze became burdened regret. “I understand, Arya, but you have to understand me too. I’m Lord Baratheon now. I have responsibilities just like your father used to as Lord of Winterfell. I must take care of the people on my land and it’s winter and there is a famine going on. Your brother, the King, does little to nothing to help us. Perhaps it’s treason to speak like that but I wasn’t raised a lord. I’m not versed in the art of the deceit. The kingdom is breaking apart, there are wars everywhere, the Reach broke off and no longer sends us food and we have no money to buy it from the East.”

Arya’s heart sank. Gendry wasn’t a liar. If he said these things, especially in that raw, painfully honest tone, it was because they were true. They confirmed everything she had heard in Essos. What else was the Dragon Queen telling the truth about? She shook her head, refocusing her attention on the two of them. “What does this have to do with us?”

This time he glared at her. “I ought to marry, Arya, and marry someone who will make a good alliance that could feed us until winter is over. Besides, I need to have heirs to continue the Baratheon line. It is my duty as Lord of Storm’s End. Maester Jurne says Lady Malora Hightower or a Dornish princess would make a proper bride. Their Houses still have food but they have also broken away from the Crown which would create complications….”

Something her own maester had taught her sparked into Arya’s mind in an instant. “Malora Hightower is old.”

Gendry shrugged and poured himself a cup of wine. “According to Maester Jurne, she’s still of child bearing age. I do not have the luxury of love and beauty, Arya.”

It dawned on her all of the sudden. She had been gone for almost six years. It was a small miracle Gendry wasn’t already married with children. Perhaps then his wife would have made him turn her away. It would have been her right as the lady of his castle.

“You understand, don’t you?” he said beseechingly. “You are highborn, after all. Word cannot spread that I might be keeping a paramour. My chances of making a good match for House Baratheon are not that good, anyway.”

She looked, really looked at him. The years had not done him a disservice. He was still her Gendry, tall and lean and strong. He had more of a beard than she remembered but it suited him. He was also a man, weary and heavy with responsibilities. He talked about matches and alliances and politics. Suddenly she felt very tired. She traipsed to the chair across the table from him. Gendry quietly poured her a cup of wine too.

“I’m sorry, Arya. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

“You didn’t hurt me,” she snapped and instantly regretted it. He looked as if she had just slapped him.

“Let us not quarrel. I want us to be friends.”

“Friends?” She spat the word out as if it were venom, anger rising within her, and did not touch the cup he wedged towards her.

He slammed his own cup down on the table, a few drops of blood red wine spilling over. “What do you want from me, Arya? What do you think a lord or a lady, for that matter, does? What did your father do? Or your mother? Did they spend their days feasting at high tables? Sure, some lords do but that’s not me! I don’t want to gorge on pheasant and Dornish reds while the peasants on my land starve to death, their children freezing in huts that haven’t seen fire in months. I was one of them once. I still remember how a bowl of brown tastes. I want to take care of them and I cannot do that by thinking of myself and what I want. I have to marry into a house that still has wheat. I have to be careful not to provoke the Crown. I need to listen to my maester and others like him, people wiser than me, people who know how you run a land in winter. You came here, you wouldn’t tell me why and I still promised you shelter. I would not go back on my word but I cannot give you things I’m denying myself, Arya!”

“My brother tried to kill me,” she choked out, surprised at herself even as she was saying it.

“Bran? I mean, the King?”

She nodded, feeling the hot trail her tears were leaving behind on her cheeks. “I don’t know who to trust anymore. I don’t know if anything I believed about my family still holds true. I no longer know who’s a friend and who’s an enemy. Throughout everything that happened to us I told myself that we were in the right, that it was the power lust and cruelty of others that had undone us, that we were different. I kept repeating myself Father’s words: when the snows come and the cold wind blows, the lone wolf dies but the pack survives. I thought that if I stood by the pack, we would be fine but the truth is we haven’t been a pack for a long, long time…. That is why we scattered so easily. Sansa tried to kill me when I came to Winterfell and Bran tried to kill me when I came back to Westeros again. My own family! Who are they? Who are we? I do not know anymore. Perhaps the Faceless Men were right and I was better off as No one. Perhaps I should have stayed with them and completed my transformation, cast aside Arya Stark of Winterfell forever.”

“Everyone always thinks they are the good ones in a war,” Gendry said gently and reached across the table to squeeze the tips of her fingers briefly before releasing her hand as if her skin had burnt him. “You can trust me, Arya Stark of Winterfell. As for your brother… your brother doesn’t seem to be himself anymore.”

“You are the second person to tell me this.”

“Who was the first?”

Arya winced. “This is the worst part. That she might be about everything, after all.”

Gendry frowned. “Who?”

“The Dragon Queen!”

“You spoke to her? When? How?”

Arya got up. “It’s a long story,” she said. _Not to mention a most troubling one_ , she thought. One she feared recounting to him because she had a feeling he would confirm the deep, dark suspicion nagging at her: that everything Daenerys Targaryen told her was true. She didn’t want to consider where that would leave her, where it would leave her family. And worst of all, she was terrified of the implications for Jon. “One better left for the morrow,” she added.

Gendry was openly doubtful. He knew her too well.

“I cannot tell you,” he said as she made to leave. “For I swore that I would abet and protect him but I cannot help it if you stumble upon the discovery yourself.”

Arya turned around.

# # #

Arya slipped quietly as only she could through the servants’ quarters at Storm’s End till she reached the lonely door tucked away in the maze of corridors. The fool’s song had followed her into the night for most of her trek.

_In the dark the dead are the dancing. And the ice is rejoicing. In the dark the men are falling. Oh, I know, I know…._

How could Gendry not see just how creepy the jester was failed her? She pushed the door open. A man raised his head from where he was bent over a book at the table. Arya gasped.

“Ser Davos?”

# # #

That night Arya returned to the quarters Gendry had assigned her with a heavy heart and tears in her eyes. The Dragon Queen had been right about one more thing: Bran was gone and there was no telling if she would ever get him back. That night, when her glass candle came to life and Daenerys Targaryen advised to go to White Harbor, for the Northerners needed her more than they knew, she didn’t hesitate and rushed to warn Gendry and Ser Davos.

# # #

The Unsullied and the Hightower army unceremoniously disarmed the Northerners and the Wildlings took them prisoner. Jon had urged them not to resist. They didn’t stand a chance anyway. Then they were taken to the castle, the highest in rank gathered in the big hall. They were given food too varied and plentiful to come from White Harbor’s meager resources and strange men and women soon filtered through the Unsullied guarding them ostensibly in order to treat the wounded.

“What do you think they will do to us?” Lord Manderly wanted to know.

Jon was about to answer when he heard Morna White Mask who sat to his left hiss like a serpent.

“Death,” the Wilding warrior and witch cried out pointing to the newcomers who had come to treat them. “Death!” She had fallen to the floor, slowing crawling backwards, her weirwood mask askew. “Please… we have suffered enough. Do not come for my people… for my children. We will worship you. We will build you alters.”

Confused, Jon looked to the foreign doctors. Morna was pointing in the vague direction of a tall, willowy older woman whose hair was dyed blue. She had a tear tattooed under one eye. She was being followed around by another, younger woman with dark hair that reached to her shoulders and eyes that could be either green or blue. She seemed to be an apprentice of some kind handing out linens, thread and various jars to the older woman.

“Please,” Morna repeated, this time pointing to the slight, completely harmless appearing young woman. Jon had never seen Morna so terrified. Not even when facing White Walkers and ice dragons.

He turned to Morna in concern to either ask her to stop and not make their situation worse or what was happening. He was unsure himself.

“Not many would see through a shadowbinder’s glamor.”

Jon froze. He would know that voice anywhere. He whirled around. The young woman was gone. In her stead, wrapped in her black cloak stood Daenerys Targaryen looking unchanged, healthier than the last time he had seen her, though, and devastatingly beautiful. She paid him no heed, however, and slowly advanced towards Morna. Tormund slid closer too. Jon shot him a warning look. He couldn’t help but notice a few of the Unsullied as well as figures clad in black cloaks similar to the one Dany was wearing creep closer. Shadows coiled like black smoke at her feet.

“You have nothing to fear from me,” she told Morna in a soft, eerily calm voice. “I have not come for your people or your children. The shadow you see in me belongs to the dead city of Stygai at the Heart of Darkness. It has no business with you.” She stretched a gloved hand towards Morna. “I require no worship and no alters.”

Morna got up slowly and without taking the hand Dany was extending her. “I have seen you before at Winterfell. Only from afar but there was no dark ember within you. What have you become? A goddess or a demon?”

Not one muscle moved on Dany’s face. “I am neither. I am mortal, same as you.”

“You are not akin to no one living that I know.” Morna arranged her mask back into place. “We keep our own gods but I would not wish to anger any of the foreign ones. If you desire sacrifices, we will bring them.”

Something shifted on Dany’s expression, something darker, then it went away in an instant. “There will be no sacrifices,” she said firmly. It wasn’t quite a command but it was close enough.

Morna nodded readily.

Seemingly satisfied, Dany turned on a heel. As her cloak swished around, she did issue a command. One in a language Jon failed to place. The tone, however, was unmistakable. Several of the dark clad figures, which Jon now noticed were wearing gleaming red masks, grabbed him. Tormund and several of the Wildlings made to lunge for him.

“No,” he ordered. “Just wait for me here.”

He knew he wasn’t coming back but he hoped they didn’t. Putting up a fight would be useless under the circumstances and he didn’t want anyone paying for what he did. Morna clung to one of Tormund’s arms.

“Do not anger the gods,” she pleaded.

The shadows rose around Jon forming a shield around him. Though he was no resisting, the grip of the people who had seized him was unyielding as steel. They dragged him after them unceremoniously as Dany lead the way out of the hall with wide, confident strides. Her people parted to make room for her bowing as she passed them by. Grey Worm waited for them at the door, his arms folded behind his back, his expression unreadable, only his eyes burning with hate. There was a man Jon didn’t know next to him: tall, dark-haired and clad in brown leather armor. The hatred in his eyes mirrored that of Grey Worm, his lips curled in a snarl. A woman, dressed all in red, stood a few feet away down the corridor. There was hate in her eyes only mild curiosity but her smirk was far more unsettling than the two men’s open hostility.


	15. Chapter 15

It took the death of hope to let you go  
  
So break yourself against my stones  
And spit your pity in my soul  
You never needed any help  
You sold me out to save yourself  
And I won't listen to your shame  
You ran away - you're all the same  
Angels lie to keep control...  
  
Ooh, my love was punished long ago  
If you still care, don't ever let me know  
If you still care, don't ever let me know....  
(Slipknot, _Snuff_ )

To Jon’s surprise, he was taken outside instead of being dragged deep into the bowels of the White Castle to the dungeons. Perhaps they were taking him to Wolf’s Den and he allowed himself a moment to contemplate the irony of being held in a prison with such a name by the Dragon Queen. However, it was far more likely that he was being lead before the dragons to be burnt, possibly after being first ripped apart by their sharp teeth. There was a part of him that yearned for the oblivion, while the man who had spent most of his life at war knew that his sword was valuable in fight the against the White Walkers. He doubted it would be enough to sway Dany, though. Not that he blamed her. At least, from the look of things, she seemed determined to fight the Dead. Perhaps the living had a chance, after all.

It offered a not so small measure of comfort. With or without him, the Dawn would still come. His life stretched behind him and he realized that his checkered contribution to the Great War was the most important part of it. And not just because after the betrayal of his family and his uneven experiences with the Free Folk, it was largely the only thing left to him. The only reason. He just wished he could have done more to redeem himself after how badly he had misjudged the threat the first time around.

Snow creaked under heavy boots as he as taken in the castle’s courtyard. He saw Unsullied going about their business, clearly establishing camp, under the curious gazes of a handful of Hightower knights. A few of them turned their heads and spat when he passed by. He knew why. It had nothing to do with their obvious allegiance to Dany. He was a tainted man on this side of the Wall now. He had committed the three gravest offenses in Westeros: he had broken an oath, killed his kin and killed his queen. The only father Jon had known had despised Jaime Lannister for only two of the three and the king Jaime had slain had been the same one who had murdered Ned’s father and older brother. Still in Ned’s eyes Jaime’s deeds had been unforgivable. He heard whispers of _Queenslayer_ and _Oathbreaker_ and remembered how quickly those he had killed Dany for had been to rid themselves of him. At least, these people were strangers.

There were odder figures among the men in the yard with their faces covered by gleaming masks that were as red as blood. Their eyes glistened oddly as they stared at him. They made for a more unsettling sight that the Dothraki had. As Dany passed, these men paused what they were doing and bowed all the way to the ground, pressing their foreheads into the snow. One of them did no such thing, though, merely slipped through the prostrating bodies to look at him with warm, chestnut eyes. She, for she seemed to be a woman, wore a long-sleeved dress with a pattern that reminded him of Melisandre’s choker. He could gaze back at her to fleetingly to be sure but he thought he saw pity in her eyes.

The masked men were not the most exotic presence, though. There were others: taller than any men Jon had ever seen, almost as tall as giants, though far leaner. Some were as tall as eight feet, their legs amazingly long, and towered over the rest of the people in the yard with ease. They gawked back at him with golden eyes set in expressive, light bronze-skinned faces. A few sported short black beards but many were clean shaven. They wore full-body chainmail, even their gloves were made of small metal rings, and brandished giant, black bows and superb, seemingly endless curved swords with long grips that could clearly accommodate two hands. He flashed back to what he had once overheard Maester Luwin explain to Bran and Rickon. _Lengii_ , he realized, _these are Lengii._ Then he was wrenched forward.

Above his head the dragons circled and cried out. Where had Dany gotten so many of them, he wondered briefly before deciding it didn’t matter. It wasn’t hard to guess how come she was alive but for her to have amassed such an army, it meant she had built quite a power base in Essos, perhaps even an empire. It would have inconceivable that word of it didn’t reach Westeros in the past nearly six years. Which meant one thing: Sansa and quite possibly most of the Northern lords had known Dany was still alive and had not breathed a word of it to him. Betrayal pooled like acid in his gut. How many times was it now? He had lost count. He remembered that some of the Northern lords had also betrayed Robb and failed to heed Jon’s own call when he had liberated Wintefell from the Boltons, while one house had even delivered Rickon to Ramsay. The vaunted loyalty of the Northerners belonged solely to their interests, it seemed.

_A Northern fool_ , he thought bitterly. But not for the reasons he had once assumed.

He was taken to the castle’s godswood. The central weirwood tree was ancient, thick and splendid, visibly flourishing as it stood in stark contrast with the rest of White Harbor, the once prosperous city ravaged by winter and hunger.

Dany stopped under the ruddy leaves of the tree, her silver braids flowing freely on her black cape, her entire appearance that of a shadow in a winter garden. An involuntary shiver crept up Jon’s spine. She no longer seemed unchanged. Her once open book expression was shuttered off, cold, her eyes two chips of violet ice. She gave a command in the alien language he had heard her use inside. He was dropped in the snow and his guards stepped back at once. Jon pulled himself to his feet with as much dignity as he could muster and brushed a few white specks from his fur. Then Dany added another order, this time in Valyrian. He didn’t understand it but he remembered enough of Maester Luwin’s lessons to the Stark children to recognize it.

Grey Worm and the dark-haired man in brown leather stepped forward. Grey Worm sounded uncharacteristically meek as he replied. The other man showed no such deference, his hand going to the pommel of the arakh at his waist, as he turned his head to glare at Jon with fresh bout of burning hate. Jon felt an unpleasant stab. The stranger was obviously one of her military commanders but the loathing on his face when he looked at Jon was deeply personal. Jon could only think of one way in which he could have wronged this man he didn’t even know. For a short moment he couldn’t help but wonder at the relationship between him and Dany. The stranger was young and handsome and wore armor like a second skin. Was he her lover? Her husband maybe? It was very much like her to marry a warrior, especially one who seemed so loyal. Six years was a long time.

The argument between Dany and her commanders was curt ending with both of them retreating to the edge of the godswood chastened. Jon understood. They hadn’t wanted to leave her alone with him. They weren’t exactly alone, though. The two men and many more Unsullied and masked figures hovered where the trees ended.

Once they had some privacy, such as it was, Dany turned her head to contemplate the frowning face of the weirwood tree, raising a hand to run it on the white bark. She no longer wore her mother’s ring only a seal one. Another way in which she was different from the Dany he recalled. The Dany he had killed. He shuddered again waiting for her to break the silence. When the moments ticked by with only the sound of the wind ruffling the leaves between them, he quietly slipped to his knees and lifted his eyes to her.

“My Queen,” he began but didn’t get to continue.

She whirled on him, something dark and terrible unfurling in her eyes before she pulled it back and schooled her expression into cool aloofness. “I am not your queen anymore,” she snapped. “You have forsaken every vow you have ever taken, Jon Snow. Your words mean less than nothing to me. Get up! Whatever you were going to plead for would have gone unheeded, anyway.”

He would have pleaded for the lives of the Wildlings and the commoners in the North. They had done her no harm and they would require her protection during the war. Not wishing to aggravate her further, he obeyed pulling himself upwards. “Anything you wish to do to me, I deserve it,” he found himself saying. “But….”

She rolled her eyes, looking almost bored. “I am not going to do anything to you. In case it has escaped your notice, there is a war going on and Death and Winter have come for all of us, regardless of what we have done to each other.”

“It has not escaped my notice,” he bit back sharply.

She narrowed her eyes. “Truly?” she mocked. “You took an oath when you became a man of the Night’s Watch but it meant less to you than the words you swore to me. You were meant to be the sword in the darkness but you climbed down the Wall and went to fight your sister’s battle and then you had the gall to lecture me on the Great War.” She took a step towards him, her eyes ablaze. “You wore a crown and won glory for your beloved House Stark as if the Dead would not slay those with direwolf banners. Look around! The Great War is upon us and where are you? Because you are certainly not up any Wall. You knew!” She crept even closer as she raised her voice, the accusation ringing clearly in tone. “You knew! And you wasted us precious time! I am the shield that guards the realm of men, not you!”

He locked eyes with her. “You’re right! I failed at my post. I left to fight the Starks’ war thinking I can put the real one on hold. I underestimated the danger and did not realize that what lasted a generation eight thousand years ago could not have ended in one night at the gate of Winterfell. All of that is true and I cannot undo it. All I can do is attempt to make up for it by fighting until my last breath for the Dawn.”

“The Dawn does not require your death but your life.”

He nodded drawing the right conclusions. “Am I free to go?”

“Not yet.” She gestured towards the edge of the godswood and one of the Unsullied brought her a thick, leather bound book. “I want to read you something first.” She opened the tome at random and began reading. “F _or all the temptation the Wildling woman posed, Jon Snow never broke his oath to the Night’s Watch_ _and never touched her_ _._ ”

Jon’s felt his cheeks heat up and the warmth spread quickly to his ears. She knew for a fact that was not true. He had told her all about Ygritte in the few happy days they had had together. “What is that?”

She smiled sweetly. “ _A Song of Ice and Fire_ by your friend, Samwell Tarly, the great reaveler of great secrets.” She leafed through the book. “It was a most fascinating read. For instance, I did not know you had slain me heroically in battle. I suppose writing that you killed your queen like a coward while she was unarmed and you were kissing her does not a heroic tale make. I was also unaware that you were… how does the former Grand Maester who did not complete his studies put it?… _the prince that was promised and his is the song of ice and fire._ ” She eyed Jon contemptuously. “I have always thought our world was the song of ice and fire. There is a lovely Valyrian poem about it: _Winter and summer wrestling together on the wheel of time_ ….”

Jon clenched his fists. “I didn’t ask Sam to write any of that,” he ground out.

“Yet this would be how Westerosi history remembers you.”

“Is that the only copy of the book?”

She tossed it to him and he caught it reflexively. “Mayhaps. I confess no longer caring what the Westerosi think of me so it never occurred to me to ask.”

Jon weighed the book in one hand. “Is Sam still alive?”

She nodded.

“Good because I am going to kill him.”

“Ser Garth Hightower has him,” she told him. “The Citadel has quite a few things to judge him for. I will, however, instruct Ser Garth to ease your reunion. I am certain you two have much to talk about.” She paused frowning slightly. “I am curious, though, about his theory.” She pulled the large, red sword he had seen her with before from underneath her cape and actually extended it to Jon.

He took it after only a brief moment of hesitation.

“Lift it,” she instructed coolly.

He did remember what else he had seen the sword do an instant too late. The sword slipped into a swirling blade of flame, the blazing heat transferring to the pummel immediately. It singed his skin and Jon dropped it before it could burn his sword hand. For the first time he saw malice in Dany: her gleeful smirk held a malevolent edge.

“A few drops of Targaryen blood do not make you a dragon,” she said and grabbed back the discarded weapon. She lifted it with ease even as it turned to flame again.

“Lightbringer,” he whispered. “You _are_ Azor Ahai!”

She didn’t answer.

“Dany,” he started.

She glared at him, still holding the burning sword between them. “Dany was a frightened child who cowered before her brother. Dany was a fallen queen who thought with her heart instead of her head and was lost the moment she looked to you. Dany is dead. You put a knife through her heat or don’t you remember? I am Daenerys Stormborn, the Shadow Queen, the Mother of Monsters, the Unburnt.” She lowered the sword. “You shall address me as such and never presume any familiarity with me. What came back is fire and shadow and very little blood. You hold no sway over what came back. You don’t have my wrath and you don’t have my thirst for vengeance but you don’t have anything else, either. _Now_ you are free to leave, Jon Snow, Oathbreaker.”

Jon considered her carefully. She was right: she was no longer the woman he knew. The woman he knew was passionate, wild, unpredictable just like fire. She could warm him up with the same ease with which she could burn down an entire city when mad with grief and fury. The woman he knew would have burnt him by now. Instead this new Daenerys made him think of the North, the real North far beyond the Wall. There was no burning flame in her and no warmth, either. She was cold, unmovable, untouchable and above all, unknowable. This new Daenerys had chosen a much more subtle form of vengeance and he had a feeling he was only beginning to feel its insidious bite.

“I am not a threat to your throne. Targaryen or not, the lords of Westeros would not easily follow a Queenslayer with no army or lands.”

She shrugged, appearing unaffected by his assurance/ “Not to mention, no money. Westeros is deeply in debt. You wouldn’t last a day on the throne before the Iron Bank came for you. It is no matter. I know you are no threat to my reign. You have no claim to the kingdom I have raised in the East. You have no part in the new, Stormborn, dynasty I intended to found. My kingdom is mine not because I am a king’s daughter or because I happen to have the right name but because I built it from the ground up with fire, sweat and blood. _My_ fire, sweat and blood!”

Jon was confused. “Why are you here if not for the throne of the Seven Kingdoms?”

“I am here to defend my home,” she replied with a viciousness that surprised even him.

Perhaps the living had a better chance than he though. Standing beneath the bright red leaves of the weirwood tree, all shadow, silver and ice, the cries of the dragons still echoing all around her, he realized she would give the White Walkers a far more bitter fight than anyone expected. Then he recalled the burning sword in her hand and his heart gave a painful lurch. Fire or ice, he still loved her. Whether he had a right to it or not.

He made for her, unsure when he would see her next and not wanting their meeting to end just yet, but she had half turned away effectively dismissing him, her eyes fixed on the tree.

“Your Grace,” he began, the word _sorry_ prickling at his tongue but still too small for what all the things standing between them. “I did what I thought was right no matter how wrong it felt to me. I chose to do my duty in the face of love. I thought I was protecting my sisters and the people….”

“You are dismissed, Lord Snow,” she interrupted, her voice so even and devoid of emotion, it was chilling, and left first.

# # #

As she walked through the snow covering the godswood, striving to keep her steps slow and measured, Dany drew her hands under her cloak. They were shaking. The face carved into the weirwood tree stared after her, its still eyes bearing into her back, while the blood red leaves whispered. Jon was staring too, she could tell. The magic of the tree was a low hum but she felt it deep in her blood: not as alien as that of the Others but not familiar like that of the East either.

She hoped that what the Children of the Forest had seen had been convincing. If she could face the man who had killed her without tearing him apart with her bare hands then she would want not vengeance for what the Children had had done. If the living were to prevail, she needed to reforge the ancient alliance. She needed whatever was left of the Children’s magic, as little as she trusted their use of it.

Every word she had said to Jon had been calculated in order to convey her intended message both to him and to the Children. There would be no retribution but she would not allow any rewriting of history, either. Without meaning to, Jon and the Starks had taught her a crucial lesson the last time she had been in Westeros: knowledge was a weapon. Sometimes it cut deeper than swords.

There was second low hum chanting in her veins. There was magic in Jon Snow too and it was far more potent than that of Arya Stark. Different too. It was the magic of fire and blood that allowed him to ride dragons but that was not the strongest stratum. No, within Jon dueled the icy touch of the Others and the same magic the Three-Eyed Raven carried: the magic of greenseers and skinwalkers. Jon had more in common with the Children than he did with her. It was fitting she had sought to speak to them both at the same time.

There was something else in Jon too. Something dark, some ember that, much like her, he had carried with him from death. It was not the touch of shadow, though. It was something she failed to place. Something bestial and as ancient as Stygai but wholly different. Something that had come from the Lands of Always Winter just like her second life had come from the Corpse City at the Heart of Darkness. She wondered how much Jon knew but then guessed it was very little, if anything at all.

Melisandre had told her the Wall used to enhance magic in ways even Asshai couldn’t. That something had slithered in from the Lands of Always Winter as Melisandre had conducted the ceremony and woken Jon. Dany was wary of rising that magic as much as she was of that of the Children but she suspected that before the War was over, that choice would be ripped from her.

She took a deep breath and marched to where Grey Worm and Daario were waiting for her. _I am a weapon_ , she told herself. _Weapons do not fear. Weapons do not look back._

But her heart was racing and there was cold sweat on the back of her head. For the first time since Stygai she was afraid. She tasted the ghost of blood on her tongue and she could feel the gash in her heart pulsing with each beat. Her chest was heavy and the fire inside her ran cold. If she closed her eyes, she knew she would see Jon above as his dagger was taking her life away. Her temples throbbed. The white of snow and the gray of the skies wavered around her.

She dared sneak a glance past her left shoulder. Thankfully, mercifully, Jon was gone. The tang of blood grew sharper in her mouth. She felt feverish, even as myriads of frigid sweat drops bloomed on her shivering skin. Her legs became liquid and she stumbled.

Daario’s face was frantic, as he looped one arm firmly around her middle. “My Queen,” he whispered fearfully.

Grey Worm gripped her free elbow, supporting her too.

“I’m alright, I’m alright,” she said quickly, even though she sounded sick to her own years.

“What did he do?” Daario asked, his voice quaking with anger.

“Feed him to Vhagar, Mhysa,” Grey Worm advised. “He is vicious. He would take his time, make it last.”

Dany pressed a clammy hand to her forehead. “I am fine,” she insisted, this time with more vehemency. “I just need to breathe.” And she inhaled deeply, the cold air unpleasant as it filled her lungs.

_A weapon_ , he repeated in her head. _And weapons do not feel. Weapons do not fear. Weapons only slash._

That night Stygai didn’t sing in her dreams but the scales of Drogon were warm beneath her cheek and she slept cradled in her son’s embrace. In her dreams, she saw New Valyria instead and in it every door was red.

TBC


	16. Chapter 16

Dany kept her eyes on the map of Westeros on the table around which here War Council was gathered. She needed someone from the North on the Council but there just wasn’t anyone she could trust enough to allow him or her in her inner circle.

“If you say we will win, My Queen, I will believe it,” Daario said all of the sudden.

Dany searched his face. None of his usual cockiness could be read on his features. The knot in her stomach tightened. Daario was used to enemies who were made out of flesh, blood and bones. That was what he knew. The unknown posed by the Others and their Army of the Dead rattled him and he was looking to her for reassurance. They were all looking to her for reassurance—Ser Garth Hightower, her bloodriders, the commander of the Lengii, Grey Worm, the Shadowmen, and even Kinvara and Quaithe. Speaking about a war against magical ice creatures and the dead was one thing, facing them in battle, another one entirely.

“We will win,” she said with a confidence she didn’t feel, her hand instinctively searching for the pommel of Lightbringer. She remembered finding the sword in Stygai and the corpse city had never seemed farther away. She didn’t want to pull at the thread of her connection to a place that terrified every sane person on earth, including shadowbinders. Normal people feared Stygai, she was apparently afraid of Jon Snow. Everyone had their oddities, she reasoned. _If I look back, I am lost_ , she reminded herself. “The question now, however, is: can we keep the North?”

“We have won a great victory,” Ser Garth pointed out with his experience of fighting men.

She understood his point. Men would have been demoralized by such a defeat as the one they had just dealt the Others; they would have needed time to regroup. But the Others were not men. They would fall upon White Harbor again and soon.

“We had the element of surprise,” Kinvara replied in Dany’s stead. “We would have no such fortune during the next battle.”

“Our Queen is a Dragon Queen,” the Lengii commander interjected.

Dany shook her head. “They have dragons too and they can ride them… each one of them. So far we have only one dragonrider, me.” She decided to keep to herself that there would be another and soon. Many people in this room, herself included, would be uneasy at the thought of Jon Snow, the Oathbreaker with both Stark and Targaryen blood, former King in the North and possible King Beyond the Wall, atop of a dragon. Neither had a choice in the matter, though. They were at war and they needed every advantage they could find. “We do not have aerial supremacy,” she added out loud. “They do. And on land they are unmatched.”

Grey Worm’s jaw clenched but Ser Garth and Daario appeared confused.

“How so?” Daario. “There can’t be that many of them.”

“It doesn’t matter how many they are,” Dany explained. “Only how many cemeteries there are between here and the Narrow Sea. For everyone of us that falls they can rise two, three, maybe more. The longer the war goes, the fewer men we’ll have and the larger their army will grow.”

Ser Garth snorted in a manner that was unusual for him. “I knew Lord Eddard Stark and greatly respected him, but the Northerners… my father once said that the Wall should have been built at the Neck. We still have the seas.”

Dany leaned back in her chair. “Not for long. You have seen what happens when they get close.”

“Even if the seas freeze at the shore, the Ibbenese style ice-breaking ships you ordered built in Braavos will break through,” Daario reasoned.

“Provided that the ice does not get thick enough,” Kinvara replied.

The temperature in the room dropped incrementally. Dany felt the tightening in her jaw. She knew what Kinvara meant.

“How thick can it get?” Ser Garth wanted to know.

“Thick enough for their army to march over the Narrow Sea and into the East,” Dany explained. “It is not as if they have to concern themselves with feeding their troops.”

“The odds may be against us for the moment but let us not forget the living have won this war once,” Quaithe said, speaking for the first time, her deep, even voice soothing and unsettling at the same time.

Something sparked in Dany’s memory but she pushed it back in the recesses of her mind. She didn’t know how old Quaithe was, if she had seen the first War for the Dawn, how much she knew of it or how much she suspected about Dany’s time in Stygai.

“Quaithe is right,” Dany said firmly. “As is Ser Garth. We have won a great victory and we should celebrate. Let the Northern lords, however few they might be left, that we are to have a banquet tomorrow night.” She saw varying degrees of bewilderment in the faces around her but since she had voiced her last words as a command, nobody seemed inclined to disagree. It was a refreshing difference from her council from back when she had first come to Westeros. “Tell them the Dragon Queen would provide the food for the feast… and invite the Free Folk as well.” With that she stood effectively dismissing them.

Ser Garth bowed and left first followed by the Lengii commander and Grey Worm. Daario hesitated and cast her a quizzing look she pretended not to see. Left with nothing else to do, he shrugged and followed Grey Worm on his way out. Quaithe and Kinvara stayed behind, the tension between them palpable. The members of the Council of Maeges were divided by ancient and bitter feuds and only held together by the common threat and Dany’s own dark reputation. All the things she feared about herself had their uses every now and then.

It was Quaithe who won this round of the silent animosity between her and Quaithe. Not all shadowbinders worshiped R’hllor but then Dany wasn’t sure if Quaithe was a shadowbinder at all or something else entirely. She also had no idea if Quaithe kept any gods. What she knew for certain was that Kinvara was a fire maege and not a shadowbinder. She had wrestled power over the cult of R’hllor from the High Priest, Bennero, and maintained it through a mix of terror and diplomacy.

When Kinvara left, her crimson dresses whirling after her, Quaithe came and sat across the table from Dany.

“The living did win the previous War for the Dawn, did we not, My Queen?”

So she did suspect something about what Dany had learnt in Stygai.

Dany locked eyes with her. “We are here, are we not?” she said with finality.

# # #

Arya collided with Jon, almost knocking him off his feet in her haste. Her arms came to wrap themselves solidly around his torso. He stiffened and did not return her embrace, a thousand suspicions entering his mind at once.

“I thought I would never see you again,” she murmured before she drew back.

When she did, he could see her eyes were misty. She looked much as she did when they had parted way in King’s Landing six years prior. Perhaps her hair was a tad longer.

“As did I,” he replied tightly.

“I have so many things to tell you,” she said casting sideways glances that in somebody else would have been nervous.

From the corner of one eye, Jon saw Sansa and a handful of Northern ladies enter the large courtyard of the White Castle. They were flanked by men carrying Baratheon banners. He didn’t see any hostile reaction from Daenerys’ men who were all round but that didn’t lessen any of his doubts. What were his sisters planning now? And more importantly, how did they intend to use him in this new scheme?

“Widow’s Watch fell,” Arya said sadly. “We barely made it there in time to rescue the women and children.”

“What are you doing here?” Jon asked. “I thought you had gone West of Westeros.”

Arya frowned. “I did. And you would believe this. I ended up recreating Nymeria’s journey. Our world is round,” she finished with big, wide eyes and a mischievously triumphant smile that reminded him of the Arya he had known a long time ago, back when he had loved to muse her hair. That was his mistake, he realized. When he had left for the Wall, Arya, Sansa and Bran had been children, still innocent. When they had met, they had all become jaded adults with plots and secrets and dark intentions. “I am here because of the Dragon Queen,” Arya added when he would say nothing.

His penchant for few words could come in handy, he thought, as his fingers instinctively went to his hip where Longclaw had hung for so long it had all but become a part of himself. Perhaps it was too late to defend the woman he loved. Perhaps it was not. Only time and his actions would tell. For now he would watch, listen and see what he could glean.

Sansa reached them, looking disheveled and angry, her snow wet red strands falling disorderly around her full, pale face. Jon recognized the resentment in her eyes. Lady Catelyn had used to look at him much same way. How could he have not seen it before? Lady Catelyn had always feared that should her husband legitimize Jon, he would take away what belonged to her children. Sansa obviously shared that sentiment. Like mother, like daughter.

Arya made an attempt at a curtsy. It came out awkward and inept. Jon didn’t even incline his head. He was one of the Free Folk now by Sansa’s choice among others, and the Free Folk did not kneel.

“So it is true,” Sansa said. “The Mad Queen has returned to take our home and wreak her vengeance.”

“You should know,” Jon bit back. “You must have known she was alive for years.”

“The White Walkers were before the gates of Winterfell. There was no time to talk about Dragon Queens,” Sansa replied acerbically.

Arya glared at her. “You knew and you didn’t tell him?”

“I had Winterfell to defend!”

“So you couldn’t spare a single moment?” Jon retorted. “You have done an excellent job of defending Winterfell, by the way. This is why the Enemy is now feasting in the Stark ancestral home.”

A single, long tear ran down Arya’s left cheek. “We lost Winterfell? This is why you are all here. We lost our home.”

“And we are about to lose the entire North but not to Daenerys Targaryen,” Jon commented.

“This should not be,” Arya said dully. “We won! I slew the Night King myself.”

“We won a battle, not the war,” he pointed out. “The first Long Night lasted a generation not a single night.”

“What do we do now?”

“The same thing we did the first time: we beg the woman we all betrayed and I killed to help us. She is our only chance… again!”

Sansa’s jaw set. “I will not bend the knee to her!”

Jon snorted. “You will not have to. A queen needs a kingdom and yours is sinking by the day.”

“How dare you? I am the Queen in the North!”

“Which is what you always wanted! Congratulations, Your Grace, you have your heart’s desire. Your kingdom is out there.” He gestured in the vague direction of Winterfell. “Perhaps you would like to return to rule it.”

“Were you not there when she burnt King’s Landing?” Sansa snapped. “What do you think she would do to you, the greatest threat to her claim to Westeros, the moment she sets eyes on you?”

“Absolutely nothing,” Jon replied icily.

“If the Dragon Queen wanted us dead, we would be dead,” Arya said sharply. “In fact, you would be dead yourself, Sansa, if she hadn’t told me and Gendry where you were so we could come and rescue you.”

Sansa shrugged. “She simply wants to torture us to death herself then.”

“Then why is she not doing that at this very moment?” Arya wondered. “Why is she going out of her way to keep us alive? I should have been dead a year ago when I first reached the shores of New Valyria.”

Jon’s ears prickled. Arya had a point. Even at her most sensible, Daenerys’ blood ran hot and she was vengeful. Could she have changed that much or was this about something else entirely?

“New Valyria?” he inquired.

“The capital of her kingdom in the East,” Arya replied.

“Where is Bran?” Sansa asked impatiently.

“You will have to ask the Three Eyed Raven,” Arya answered. “Bran, if it is him, let the kingdom fall into chaos, ignored all advice and sacrificed men, women and children to the Old Gods.”

“That is a malicious falsehood spread by the Dragon Queen,” Sansa all but cried out. “Our brother was a good king.”

“The Dragon Queen said nothing of the sort,” Arya said. “I know it from Gendry, Ser Davos, Ser Brienne and even Tyrion Lannister.”

“The Dragon Queen didn’t execute Tyrion on sight?”

Even Sansa sounded shocked by that.

“She wanted us to see,” Jon muttered.

“See what?” Sansa asked.

“What we have wrought,” he answered. “Death is final, a few moments of pain and then, nothing, only darkness. No pain, no fear, no struggles. But this way we are left in a winter without ending fighting a bitter war that almost extinguished all life once. While the White Walkers chip away at the North bit by bit. Can you not see? We are losing our home in increments and without her we are powerless to stop it. This is her vengeance!”

Sansa opened her mouth to add something when they were interrupted by Lord Manderly approaching them. He bowed to Sansa first. “My Queen.” Then to Arya. “Lady Stark, it is a relief to see the hero Winterfell back home again.”

Arya winced at the title but said nothing.

“My late wife’s quarters await you, My Queen, and I am sure you would want your sister next to you.”

Jon was taken aback. “The Dragon Queen has not claimed those quarters for herself?”

Lord Manderly looked briefly to the snow on the ground. “I have not seen the Dragon Queen. Ser Garth Hightower has conveyed her message to me for she returned to her ships in the harbor. I have free reign of the castle and of the city while the foreign troops will remain here for protection. Our weapons are even being returned as we speak.” He turned to Jon. “I think they are giving the Wildlings their weapons too. I have not heard a word of your sword but I will make inquiries.”

Jon felt sympathy for Lord Manderly’s awkward position but loyal as he was, he observed his oath to his Queen in the North. “There is no need to trouble yourself, My Lord,” Jon assured him. “I am certain Longclaw will be given back to me in no time.”

It was a lie and they both knew. Neither expected Daenerys to arm Jon again.

“I will take my leave,” Jon went on. “You have duties to your Queen, My Lord, and I to my people.”

With that he whirled around, his black cape swirling behind him and strutted away. Sansa didn’t call after him but Arya jogged up to meet him.

“You’re angry with me, aren’t you?”

“What gave it away?”

“I only thought to protect you. You have to understand: I had just seen her burn an entire city to ground.”

Jon stopped, curling his hands into fists. “We all did! And I will not try to justify that but when I walked into that ruined throne room, she didn’t order me away in chains. She invited me to rule with her. Right before I kissed her and plunged a knife into her heart. So you see, Arya, you were right: she is killer. And so are we all! We are not children anymore, Arya. You are no longer my little sister to whom I gifted Needle and I am no longer that young man. We are two strangers clinging to the memory of the family who never welcomed me.”

“Jon,” she pleaded. “I am still your sister, no matter what. I will always be your sister.”

“We have never been brother and sister, Arya! You and your true sister broke the promise you made me under a weirwood tree and wielded my trust like a sword to take everything from me. And I will never forgive you!”

# # #

Jon pulled Tormund aside. “You should lead the Free Folk from now. Somebody needs to speak for them before the Dragon Queen and she wouldn’t want to hear me.”

Tormund punched him in the shoulder good-naturally. “You are our king and we do not kneel!”

“I doubt she wants anyone from this side of the Narrow Sea to kneel before her. Not anymore!”

“Then why is she here?”

Jon scowled. “To defend her home and I think her home is in the East now.”

Tormund shook his head. “The Free Folk chose you.” He shifted his weight uneasily from one foot to the other, his gaze shifting to the ground. “Morna won’t let up. She keeps insisting that Dragon Queen of yours is a kind of goddess and we should bring her offerings for her continued protection. What’s worse, Mother Moll has taken to it too.”

“She is not my Dragon Queen,” Jon said darkly.

Tormund’s eyes were far too inquisitive. For a brief moment neither spoke. Neither was eloquent about feelings, anyway. Finally Jon sighed.

“She’s changed but I don’t believe she’s changed into a goddess. But if it brings the people comfort, let Morna and Mother Moll bring their offerings. What harm can it do?”

“A lot. The Queen does not like this kind of rumors spread about her,” a throaty, steady and slightly raspy voice came from somewhere close.

Tormund raised his ax but stopped in confusion when the silent intruder proved to be a not so tall woman with her face covered by a gleaming red mask. She wore a long-sleeved, patterned dress and her brown hair was wrapped in two twin loops on her head. Jon lowered his friend’s armed hand.

“Who are you?” Jon asked.

“I am Quaithe of the Shadow,” she responded. “The Queen requests your presence, Jon Snow.”

Tormund cast him an uncertain glance. Jon tried to smile. “I will be right back.”

# # #

Quaithe of the Shadow moved with the graceful, precise steps of a nighttime predator as they navigated their way through White Harbor towards the port. Jon felt an unease similar to that he had experienced near Melisandre in her presence and something else, something he could give no choice to but that wasn’t wholly unfamiliar. This woman was more than human, he could tell.

“Will you harm her again, Jon Snow?” she asked once they were halfway through.

Jon clenched his jaw without giving an answer. He had never been the one for pouring his heart out to a stranger.

“Will you harm her again, Jon Snow?” she repeated in an impeccably calm voice.

“No,” he said firmly.

“The Queen’s heart is filled with secrets,” she said after another prolonged silence. “Before we can dream of spring, they must unravel your world.”

Jon was about to ask what she meant when she gestured towards the port. The grey horizons were filled with the new variant of the Targaryen banner painted on sails that stretched on as far as the eye could see. They flew above ships that looked like anything he had seen before: they were rather small, oddly shaped and black as tar with two masts. They were all anchored amid the drift ice at the shore as if it posed no threat to them. The nearest one had the words _Ser Jorah_ painted on its side in elegant, crimson letters. He didn’t need directions to know that was Daenerys’ ship.

He shook himself out of his fascination to ask about his companion’s cryptic remark but when he turned his head back to her, Quaithe of the Shadow was gone.

# # #

Daenerys had a far smaller and sparser cabin than one would expect from a queen. She sat behind a table covered in maps cradling a large white and blue bowl of a steamy drink the scent of it Jon recognized instantly and not with pleasure. Dothraki milk tea. She was fond of it and had once invited him to partake as well but Jon had found it disgusting, tasking like warmed, salty dirt. She was eyeing him speculatively.

“Your Grace,” he said politely.

“I would offer you milk tea but I know you despise it.”

“I do not despise it.”

She silently raised an eyebrow at that.

“I am simply not used to salted tea,” he offered.

She indicated the chair across the table from her. “Sit.”

He did, his eyes falling on the map of Westeros spreading between them.

“Lately I found myself thinking of what you told me in that cave on Dragonstone: that the First Men and the Children of the Forest fought the Enemy together, despite their doubts and differences. You omitted one thing.”

“I told you everything that I knew then.”

“Yes, you did. But the Children were creatures of magic living in a world where magic was strong. Magic was fading in our world when I birthed my dragons. It has been returning ever since but not fast enough. Even my army is made mostly of men who are only flesh and blood. And they are facing beings of pure magic and utter power.”

He lifted his gaze to her. “Why did you ask me here?”

She set down her bowl of tea. “You said I am Azor Ahai but Azor Ahai has been dead for eight thousand years. People need hope. They need to believe we can triumph over the cold, endless night our world is sinking into.”

“Do you not believe we can triumph?”

“We cannot hold the North.”

He leaned back in his chair. His heart felt like ice in his chest. “I know.”

She stood and went to a large, golden fawn colored chest in a corner of the cabin, opened it and hesitated only briefly before taking out Longclaw. Then she returned to the table and set the sword next to him. “All the dragons other than Drogon are wild ones, born in the Shadow Lands without a human guiding hand. They are all unruly but Vhagar is the worst of them. And the largest. If you manage to ride him, you would gain the respect of the others as well.”

“Why?” he asked without reaching for his sword.

She did not pretend not to grasp his meaning. “Because I do not have a choice and neither do you. I might wish to rip out your still beating heart and feast on it as I once did on a horse’s in Vaes Dothrak but that would not lessen the threat against us all. The Enemy is at the gates and you are the only dragonrider in the world beside myself. We are the last dragons and we are cursed with each other.”

Jon pulled to his feet and fastened his sword. It hadn’t escaped his notice that she was wearing Lightbringer too. He inclined his head slightly. Bowing was not in his nature but his respect for her outweighed that. He had killed the men who had betrayed and murdered him with his own hand. That she was willing to forgo a justifiable retribution for the greater good did not leave him indifferent.

“My brother,” he started, doubting he would receive an answer. “Bran… is it true that the Three Eyed Raven took him?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Let us see, shall we?”

TBC


	17. Chapter 17

Daenerys lead him through a row of Unsullied on the pier towards a lone ship standing aside from the others in the harbor. Thick snowflakes danced between them in the frigid, wintry air that bit at Jon’s cheeks. The cold had never bothered him much; it bothered him a lot less since his death. Instead he puzzled at the strange shape of the Essosi ships. He began to suspect what they were: ice-breakers. He had seen similar ones at Eastwatch but none as grand.

The lone, dark ship had a single mast and blood-red sails covered in the oddest symbols Jon had ever seen and large, scarlet glyphs etched on the hulk. These were Valyrian, Jon was almost certain of it. On the prow it had a three-headed dragon, each head strongly resembling Daenerys’ three children, their eyes made of massive rubies that looked like pulsing, bleeding hearts. There was an aura around the ship, traveling in waves from it, wrapping around Jon and pressing down heavily onto his chest. There were no Unsullied or Dothraki on the decks only ghostly, black clad figures with faces covered by red lacquer masks.

“What is the name of this ship?” he asked gesturing to the mysterious lettering on the hulk so unlike the common tongue markings on _Ser Jorah._

“ _Dream of Spring_ ,” Daenerys replied archly and climbed aboard.

Left with nothing else to do, he followed. The sea breeze was wet and icy as it made his dark curls dance against his cheeks. Only his and the queen’s footsteps echoed as they moved on the wood of the deck. The ship was eerily silent and still. Jon fell eyes track his every move though nobody budged around them. Above them a dragon’s cry trembled against the gray of the skies. He lifted his gaze briefly and saw the giant, dark shadow of Drogon and thought of the Balerion, the Black Dread. Two other dragons were flying with him and Jon wondered if one of them was Vhagar, his intended new ride. He supposed he would find out soon enough.

The cabin they entered was tiny with a low ceiling and so hot that it was stifling. The heat quite clearly came from the many, large braziers lining the room. Each one was filled with burning embers. The plain wooden walls were covered with the same, bizarre, ruddy brown glyphs he had glimpsed on the sails. In the light of so many fires he had no trouble seeing the upright silhouette of his brother standing by a modest bedding off to one side. Jon faltered. Bran could walk.

“Bran,” he whispered, instantly feeling sweat bead on his nape and on his back beneath his heavy furs. “You can walk.”

Bran turned his cool, distant gaze on him, nothing of the child Jon remembered alive in those unfamiliar orbs.

“No, he cannot.” It was Daenerys who responded. “But the powers of the Three-Eyed Raven are great. We are only beginning to understand them.”

There was a touch of nastiness in the look Bran tossed her. “You will never fully comprehend what a greenseer is and all that the Raven can accomplish.”

It wasn’t that Jon didn’t see the knife in Daenerys hand in time because he did. He also instantly gauged its lethal potential beneath its unimpressive appearance. The blade was merely a sliver of purple dragonglass, but it still looked sharp and threatening. No, Jon saw the weapon between her pale, slim fingers as soon as it appeared. That was not what stayed his hand. It was the thought of harming her again. She was about to hurt whatever his long lost brother had become and Jon felt paralyzed, frozen in place, unable to decide which way he should move. His hesitation seemed to span into eternity, though in reality it couldn't have lasted more than an instant or two. Enough for Daenerys to run the blade across her own wrist.

The dragonglass slashed at her fine, thin skin. Blood began to well, black instead of red. She lifted her arm without a word and tipped it over the fire in the brazier closest to her. A single droplet of blood licked its way into the flame. It flared up and Daenerys’s eyes changed. The violet receded and was replaced by a dark like that of cold coals. Fire bloomed in the dark and her lips moved uttering words in the shrill melody of a language utterly alien to Jon. Bran’s eyes went white as milk. All the flames in all the braziers in the room surged at once and Jon winced fearing the ship will be set aflame but the inferno did not touch the walls.

He sensed something other than fire pulse in the room, thick and heavy, reverberating in waves that coalesced in his chest and the pit of stomach. He forgot about the heat and discomfort in an instant. This was raw power, he knew it in the blink of an eye. Bran spoke words too but that language was also foreign to Jon. The waves crashed against him and he staggered, his hand going to the pommel of Longclaw. Some of whatever was wafting in the air was familiar, but every now and then one wave seemed to crush to breath out of him. He gritted his teeth and planted his feet firmly on the floor determined to stay upright and alert no matter what would happen.

Suddenly Bran wavered and fell back. Jon rushed to him eased his fall, lowering him on his knees to the wood of the floor. His eyes drifted shut but opened again almost immediately. The gaze in them was terrified, wet with unshed tears and utterly human. It belonged to his brother. There was no doubt about it.

“Bran,” Jon called, barely daring to hope.

“I am sorry…,” he murmured weakly and he sounded so much like a child that Jon realized with sickening feeling that he couldn’t have been much more than that when the Three-Eyed Raven had taken him over. “I am sorry… I saw…. I thought they meant to help us…. I thought I could help defeat the Night King…. Even if I was never to leave the cave…. Even if I never saw home or my family again…. But once I became the Raven he… he….”

Jon tried to gentle him, to tell him to save his strength. “Maybe you need a drink of water,” he offered.

Bran shook his head, tears streaming freely down his face now. He appeared so small and breakable in Jon’s arms without all the weight of the knowledge and power of the Raven. “No…. I do not know how much time I have…. I saw it all, Jon. I saw everything. Old Nan was right. Ravens are all liars. It was the Children…. They made them, the White Walkers, but they are not the true Others…. After the Long Night was over, the Others were still in the world. Their magic was everywhere. The Children of the Forest used it to turn men into the White Walkers that you first encountered so they could use them as weapons against us.”

Jon felt his blood turn to ice. “After the War? They broke the Pact and betrayed the alliance they had with the First Men.”

Bran coughed wetly before speaking again. “The First Men struck first. The Children were only trying to defend themselves. But only the Others can harness the power of Always Winter. The Children’s weapons soon turned on them and went to their true masters.”

“The Others sent them first as a distraction, to lull us into complacency, into thinking we have won. It was all a ruse,” Jon realized. “The Others are intelligent. Just like us. They can plan and device strategies. Just like us. Now thanks to the help they have received from the Children of the Forest, our old allies, they know us. The men of today. What we are capable of and most importantly, what we are incapable of.”

“Did you see?” said a familiar voice, rising above the roar of the fires while also remaining steady. “Does the Raven know to whom the Others belong?”

“The Children think they have nothing left to fear but even they would not utter the name no living being dares say,” Bran said and shuddered as Jon held onto him.

“I dare,” Daenerys said, her voice breathier than before yet still steady. “I simply wish to know!”

Bran shook his head, a few curls falling his eyes, and he lowered his gaze, saying nothing.

Jon turned to Daenerys. “You mean to find out their master.” He paused, unwilling to cause his brother more grief, but at the same time fully aware they needed every advantage they could get. War had never been a pretty business. “Bran, if you can help, please tell us his name. Then I will do anything in my power to free you from the power of the Three-Eyed Raven. This I vow to you!”

Tears trembled on Bran’s lashes as he lifted his eyes, horror filling his gaze. “You don’t know what you are asking for.”

“But I do,” Daenerys interjected sharply. “I have stared into the void and into the darkness and into the eyes of the Nameless Whisperer that haunts the dreams of men since the eons were young.”

“I know something about the void and darkness as well,” Jon added, keeping his voice as neutral as he could make it while turning his head to find his brother’s face again.

Bran’s eyes became empty and a moment later the inscrutable coldness of the Three-Eyed Raven returned. “You know nothing, the both of you! You are children whose fingertips have barely brushed against the vastness of the eons. But I will tell you what you wish to know. The one name even the priests and priestesses of the Fire God fear. The master of the Others is Nyarlothotep, the Crawling Chaos, and he is poised to swallow your petty world with its petty squabbles.”

Jon tightened his hold on the creature holding his brother captive. He had his sword and there other means of making somebody talks besides magic. That instant he heard the sound of something collapse and the flames tumbled back into the metal cages of the braziers. He wiped his head around and saw Daenerys on the floor one of her snow white hands caked with dark blood. He dropped the Raven and rushed to her but didn’t make it far.

The narrow door of the cabin was flung aside and that tall, dark-haired man Jon kept seeing around Daenerys burst in, his arakh drawn. Dothraki and Unsullied followed him together with the brunette red woman. Jon diplomatically decided not to start a confrontation.

The red woman tore a sheet of her own dress to tie the queen’s injured wrist. Jon stared at the blood-stained dragonglass blade that had to have clattered to the floor when Daenerys had fallen. It was barely thicker than a needle needle. His stomach flipped unpleasantly. There were so many things going through his head as the Unsullied disarmed and grabbed him. Why had Daenerys risked bleeding out to wrestle Bran from the Three-Eyed Raven, however briefly? Certainly gaining information had been a factor but surely there were other ways. Why was her blood black now? Were Morna and Mother Moll right and had Daenerys changed into some kind of a goddess? She had come back to life just like he had but other that, what else did he truly know about what had happened to her in the past six years?

“Remember, the Queen commanded that he was not to be harmed,” the red woman bit sharply.

The dark-haired man cast her a glare potent enough to level a few towns with its intensity. “One of these days, Kinvara, even you will make a mistake,” he replied in an accented voice.

She just smirked.

_Kinvara._ Jon filed the name away for future use.

# # #

This was familiar. The Unsullied took Jon to another ship and tossed it in its dungeon. At least, this time he was innocent of doing any harm to Daenerys. Two of the formidable soldiers chained one of his arms to the wall. The strange man stood by the door fixing Jon with a dark gaze filled with hatred. He waited until the Unsullied left and locked the door in their wake before he spoke.

“I always imagined you would be taller,” the stranger remarked dryly.

“Who are you?” Jon asked morosely. He was in no mood for a confrontation with this man. He had become oddly drained on his way here and he had many things to ponder. His pounding temples would be of no help with that.

“I am Daario Naharis, captain of the Second Sons, son of a whore and adviser to Her Grace, the Dragon Queen.”

“And her lover,” Jon added, knowing he didn’t have a right to hope the man would not correct him and say he was her consort. Yet hope he did!

Daario Naharis smirked. His smirk was only slightly less annoying than that of Kinvara. He wondered how Daenerys had gone from having people like Missandei and Ser Jorah around her to these two. But then they didn’t seem to have stabbed her in the back just yet so already they were faring much better than all of her former Westerosi allies.

Naharis took precisely one step in Jon’s direction. His smirk faded and his eyes turned dark and keen. This was an extraordinarily dangerous man. Being extraordinarily dangerous himself, Jon could spot that from a mile away.

“I am not Grey Worm,” Naharis said, his voice now level and cool. “And I am not her Bear Knight. I have no honor. All I have are a few long years to dream up various ways to make you suffer. But she commanded otherwise. And I am Daario Naharis. I only do what My Queen wants. If you kill her again, though, Drogon will find a way to bring her back but first I will avenge her.”

“I will not harm her again,” Jon said tightly.

“Your own people believe your word means nothing,” Daario spat and whirled around with a flourish.

There were a thousand of things Jon could have yelled in reply yet none made it to his lips. The foreigner was right. He, the man without a name, had become the man without honor. He lowered himself tentatively to the floor. He felt strangely drained all of the sudden, his legs liquid and warmth blooming in his veins. It was as if he had been injured though he knew himself to be whole.

Honor had been his god, instilled in him along with the belief in the Old Gods by Ned Stark. As far as Jon knew, the Old Gods were real but treasonous. They had taken his brother. Honor had let him down too. Just as Ned Stark’s family had. He had done what he thought was the good, honorable thing and everyone was scorning him for it. He closed his eyes, his lids so heavy they had become unbearable. Deserted by everything he had believed in and cast out yet again of the only family he had ever wanted, Jon slept. At peace at last. As thought all his many burdens were no longer his to bear. His dreams were devoid of any disappointment and bitterness at what he had lost. In his dreams, he felt free for the first time in his life.

He dreamt of a city unlike anything he had ever seen. Not even King’s Landing was that grand. Palaces and temples bigger than Winterfell stretched for miles adorned by elegant columns and the oddest of statues. All giant and misshapen. People and monsters milled the wide streets as if that were perfectly normal. An array of dark pillars shaped as women with snakes instead of hair and gems on their dresses gave way to a lush garden filled with unknown, fantastically colored trees and flowers. To his surprise, some of them were weirwood trees. He plunged to a hall with walls of oily black stone and braziers with flames that seemed to be alive, much like the fire Daenerys had conjured with her blood.

Blood ran in thick rivers on a seemingly endless floor of black, oily stone. Fire chased after it until they both engulfed an altar at the center. Large, scaly eggs covered the raised structure and as blood and fire poured over them, one cracked and splintered. A baby was freed from within it but the boy was far from human. Still he drew breath, the fire that bathed him leaving him unharmed, and wailed. He was stained with gore but still the crimson and golden scales covering half his body as well as his tail were visible. The baby opened his eyes: they were violet in color.

# # #

In her cabin aboard _Ser Jorah_ Dany opened her eyes to Kinvara’s knowing smirk. She missed Missandei with an aching fierceness.

Even though she hadn’t been sleeping and had only lost consciousness, Stygai had sung to her in the blackness that had enveloped her. She had dreamt of the birth of dragons yet again and the dream had been more comforting than the glaring cruelty of reality where most of her friends were gone and both homes she had acquired for herself since her death were far and away. Still the taste of fire and blood lingered on her tongue and that felt familiar enough to bane the weakness blood loss had inflicted upon her.

Kinvara drew her attention with carefully crafted inquires about her well-being. Daenerys pushed a bright smile to her lips, withdrew from within herself and sought to answer.

# # #

Jon startled awake. Cold sweat had bloomed on his nape and the back of his throat tasted like blood and smoke. He blinked as he noticed Daenerys at the entrance to his cell. She was ghostly pale which only served to bring out her violet eyes more. Even her lips were discolored. Her braids were gone and her silver hair was flying past her small, slim shoulders freely. She looked painfully young and the effect was reinforced by her surreptitiously leaning on the door frame.

“All men must serve,” she said solemnly, her voice smaller than usual yet firm.

It sounded like the answer to Jon’s every question. He pulled to his feet, no longer having that peculiar exhausted sensation the origin of which he now understood. Outside he heard the dragons roar.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry I have been MIA, everyone, but I've been having some personal issues so I didn't feel like writing at all. Besides, I didn't want to have to face the negativity of this fandom in addition to my own problems.


	18. Chapter 18

_Six years ago_

Daenerys stepped through Asshai with a light step. That she had a secret and wore a mask meant nothing there. Everyone had a secret and hid behind a mark or a veil in the city by the Shadow. It struck her once more just how at ease she always felt in places others feared to tread. She was never a foreigner among the monsters. She was too much like them. She was beginning to suspect everything she had believed about home was wrong. Everyone trembled at the mere mention of Asshai or the Shadow but they had been welcoming to her. Everyone was afraid of the Dothraki but, for better or for worse, they had given her the only home she had ever known aside from the house with the red door in Bravos. All her life she had thought herself to be alien to Essos, a refugee from another land, but the East had provided her with the only two places she had come to call home. It was the home she had always dreamt of that had rejected her. It was to the normal people of Westeros that she had been the strangest.

_Home is where you build it_ , she thought, lifting her eyes to the tower Quaithe was pointing to, while her fingers were playing idly her mother’s ring. Its spire vanished into the foggy gloom of the dark gray clouds that never quite dissipated above Asshai. The base of the tower was rectangular, thick and wide, made of plain, black stone, and lacking in ornaments. The bloodstone was everywhere in Asshai and drank the meager light that managed to make its way to the city.

_Everything fades,_ _everyone_ _dies_ , Dany remembered her initial thoughts upon first seeing Asshai. Here she stood in the greatest city ever built by the greatest empire that ever was and noone, not even the inhabitants of Asshai, could recall its glory days. Asshai possessed many, many dark secrets but this was the worst of it all: that everyone, kings, queens and lowborn alike were less than specks of dust on the wheel of time. It was a sobering thought but one that also brought her comfort. If she was born to be a weapon in the Great War or if she was to be the Great Queen who broke the wheel, it made no difference. Eventually she would die for good and be forgotten.

A shrouded figure lead them through the maze of corridors that made up the base of the tower all the way to a twisted staircase with an elegant, slim banister. As they started to climb, Dany noted the banister was engraved with gems as large as her fist. She spied black amethyst, rubies and the brightest diamonds she had ever seen. They glowed as light-filled rainbows casting colorful rays into the surrounding shadows. Dany suspected that the gold and precious stones the Asshai’i traded for food and wine were ripped from the rich decorations that filled the plentiful great palaces and monuments of the city.

The climbed for a long while, an hour or more, with Quaithe stopping every now and then for Dany to catch her breath. They were passed on their way by other masked and veiled figures that flitted upwards silently and without paying Dany and Quaithe any heed. The magic of fire, blood and shadow singing in Dany’s veins was nothing new or unusual here. Her lacquered mask was merely one of the many as was her black cloak.

They finally arrived at the top as the stairs opened to a large, round hall with many alcoves and narrow windows carved into the black stones. There were people in the hall, though they were all quiet. The walls were littered with wide book shelves full of oddly shaped incunabula and manuscripts. Quaithe gestured that she followed and Dany did. Nobody asked them anything or tried to stop them. Dany guessed that their magic, which could be felt by all those present, was all the clearance they needed.

Quaithe picked a red gold cylinder from the shelves and handed it to Dany. The gold had whorls and shapes in it similar to Valyrian steel, yet Asshai was so such older than the former empire of the dragon lords. Holding the cylinder, Dany drew close to a purple Valyrian candle glowing bright with a white, sickly light. These were the only type of illumination in the room. Dany pulled the handle on one side of the cylinder and rolled the papyrus concealed within. Time had browned the parchment and had made it brittle, poking tiny holes in it. Still the writing was visible, though the red of the ink had faded to a dirty pink. It was the language of Asshai, which Dany had learnt it in the Shadow. There were a few scattered stools by the candle and Dany sat down and began to read.

_Asshai has stood in the beginning and shall stand still when the world ends but Stygai shall stand higher still…._

_Some things never change_ , Dany thought wryly. A year ago she might have thought this to be hubris but now she was less certain.

_Dragons were born in the Heart of Darkness….. People so ancient that they had no name first tamed dragons in the Shadow…. They brought them to Valyria and taught the shepherds they found there their art before departing from the annals…._

Dany rolled back the scroll. “Is this the truth you wanted me to find here?” she asked Quaithe furtively, though nobody paid them any heed. They all had secrets here.

Quaithe’s brown eyes glowed with golden fire beneath her red mask. She inclined her head once. Dany returned the cylinder to its place and went to stand by one of the windows. It was midday but Asshai was only slightly less darker than usual. A few lights were blinking below but other than that the city was a mass of gloom, shadows and black spires, roofs and domes. There was a slightly larger fire on the upper terrace of the temple of R'hllor.

She had long suspected some of the things she had read in the text from the artifacts and paintings on the walls of the caves in the Mountains of Morn. Quaithe slunk to her side like a silent, faithful shadow.

“There is more,” Quaithe said.

Dany nodded. She had assumed as much, given the visions she had had when she had woken up in Stygai.

# # #

There were but a few ships in Asshai’s enormous port. Dany spied two Dorne sails and one from the Stormlands but aside from that, she could only see Essosi banners. The sailors who had ventured ashore were not many and they scurried about on the keys, careful to avert their eyes whenever they came across a masked or veiled form. Some had run off from her own path as she had made her way to the waterfront. All foreigners were silent, ill at ease. No magic practice, no matter how depraved, was banned in Asshai and those who were better off away from monsters were careful not to attract the wrong kind of attention. Dany had no such cares.

A ship profiled on the horizon and in the last of the fading light Dany saw the Targaryen banner float in sight. It looked familiar and alien at the same time. She rotated her mother’s ring on her finger. It was the last and the least valuable of her mother’s jewelry: a modest work of silver with plain lines. She still remembered Viserys slipping it on her finger. It had been some time after they had been forced to sell Queen Rhaella’s crown to keep from starving while begging on the streets of the Free Cities. It had also been one of the last of the few tender moments between her and her brother. Dany had never taken off that ring, her only link to the mother she had never known, to her lost family and to the home she had always dreamt of.

She looked at the Targaryen sails again, as two Tyroshi sailors gave her a wide berth and quickened their steps upon seeing her black-clad, red mask wearing shape on the pier. That one felt even more familiar. She had walked among normal people and she had always been the odd one out. She had been the stranger because she wanted to do away with slavery or break the wheel or because she had been born on wrong hunk of rock and from the wrong family. Still, amazingly enough, somewhere in the world she was loath to return to, somebody was still loyal to her. Perhaps Daario had managed to keep his hold of the cities of the former Slavers’ Bay, regardless of the news traveling to him from Westeros, or maybe he had even managed to ensure the transition to an administration of the freed slaves.

Her gaze fell on her mother’s ring again. It had meant so much when Viserys had given it to her and she had had so many illusions back then. About herself, about her brother, about the world. But it was just a piece of silver. It couldn’t carry her mother’s warm touch. It hadn’t meant that her bother had actually cared about her. It couldn’t bring her home and it couldn’t give her a family. And the hopeful young girl she had once been had been dead for many moons.

She took off the ring and flung into the waters of the bay by Asshai. The waves looked like boiling tar and swallowed the silver easily. She turned around and walked away without looking back. Dany was dead and Daenerys Stormborn, the Unburnt, Mother of Monsters, was in no rush to bring her back.

# # #

_Now_

Leaning on the frame of the door to his cell, Daenerys lifted Longclaw. She looked as if she were about to bestow a knighthood upon him. Jon hurried to get to his feet before she could get any ideas, out of spite, if nothing else. He had no interest of becoming a Ser, when he couldn’t see the use of it for the time being. The abrupt move left him light-headed and he had to place a hand on the wall behind to steady himself.

“Throughout the ritual, magic seems to have created a bond of sorts between us,” she explained. “I would not worry. It would fade away shortly.”

“I’m not worried,” he muttered as he took back Longclaw from her extended hand. “It is your blood loss that I am feeling, am I not?”

“You still have no manners,” she said sharply, her mild irritation traveling to him through their bond.

Jon blinked at her. He sensed she was using the annoyance, slight as it was, to hide something else.

She arched a brow at him. “Thank you?”

“Thank you, Your Grace.” He tried to bow but with his lack of practice, he doubted he was successful. “What was it that I saw?”

She turned away. “The birth of dragons.”

That cleared up exactly nothing. “Are we related to dragons?” He followed her outside. It was still pitch black but the Unsullied around them were carrying torches.

Large, fluffy flakes were falling from the skies, some sticking to her hair like the increments of a crown. Others landed on her lashes making them wet. Said dragons could be heard flapping their wings above their heads. “No,” she had emphatically. “We _are_ dragons.”

Some of his confusion had to be carrying over their link so she had to be doing this on purpose.

“There is news from the Capital,” she said.

“What kind of news?” he asked as they were climbing aboard her flag ship.

“The expected kind. The coffers of the Six Kingdoms are completely empty safe for the dust they have been collecting of late.”

Once in her cabin, she sank uneasily amid the cushions lining her seat. She was attempting to hide it but she was visibly favoring her bandaged wrist. Jon’s head swarmed with questions and doubts.

An elderly Dothraki woman placed two covered platters in front of each one of them then distributed two pewter mugs emblazoned with three-headed dragons. She poured a coal black, flagrant hot drink in Daenerys’ cup but when she moved to do the same with him, the queen interrupted her with a few words in Dothraki.

“What is that?” Jon inquired gesturing to her drink.

“It is known by many names. The Valyrian word for it is _kaffa_ but the Lengii call it _qahwah_ which means to quench hunger. They claim the Pearl Emperor brought the plant to their island during the days of the Empire of the Dawn. The drink is brewed from its ground roasted beans and used to stave off sleep and weariness. Much like Dothraki tea, it’s something of acquired taste. It is bitter and strong to the taste and many add honey and milk to it but I enjoy as it is.”

The maid came back with a tankard of brown mead. Jon told Daenerys to ask her to pour him a bit of that kaffa drink. She did so quietly. Jon lifted his gaze to his kind, age streaked face.

“How do you say thank you in Dothraki?” he asked Daenerys.

“There is no word for thank you in the Dothraki language,” she replied in a surprisingly soft voice, her face darkening momentarily. Then she lowered her gaze to her steaming mug and blew over it.

Jon tasted the kaffa without another word. It was indeed bitter but it was not bad. Unlike with the milk tea, he thought he could grow accustomed to it.

Daenerys removed the cover from her platter and snagged a sardine. Jon took that as his cue to busy himself with breaking his fast. It might have been dark outside but he could guess it was close to the dawn, though they still had hours to go until the shadows would lift enough for some light to filter through the heavy clouds of winter. The food was not what he would normally eat first thing in the morning: salted and smoked whole sardines, strange looking and even stranger tasting sausages, hard boiled eggs, tiny flat breads heavily powdered with flower and candied ginger that prickled at his tongue. Still he had an iron gut so he ate without complaining, relieved to have the food alleviate some of the weakness he was feeling courtesy of the odd, magical bond with Daenerys. Speaking of which….

“Why?” he asked carefully, taking a fortifying gulp of his mead to wash off the unpleasant taste of that weird sausage. “Why would you slash your own wrist to bring Bran to the forefront?”

She all but shrugged. “There is power in kings’ blood. No less in a queen’s.”

“I was a king once.” He watched her expression grow taut. “You could have asked me.”

“This is hardly the first time I have done this.”

“Is this hardly the first time you almost bled out?”

“No,” she said lightly. “I did bleed out once. When you drove a dagger through my heart.”

“Daenerys… Your Grace…. I would offer my life but you know as well as I do, we need every sword we can get in this war.”

“Then do not ask questions you don’t want to know the answers to!”

“I do want to know the answers to my questions,” he stressed.

“You know nothing, Jon Snow.”

Jon nearly chocked on his next sip of mead. He had told her about Ygritte but he had never told her _that_.

“Are you like the Red Woman now?”

She looked away. “I wish I were. I tried to be… but I am not. I am something in between. As for the answers that I am concealing, I do so, because, as far I a can remember from my last time here, you have a hard time keeping secrets.”

He tried to catch her gaze only to find her eluding him. “I am not the man I used to be, either. I am less than a bastard now. I am an Oathbreaker, a Kinslayer, a cursed man.”

She got up with a poorly suppressed wince. She had to be wavering on her feet, despite the food she had just consumed. He resisted the impulse to leap to her aid, certain his gesture would be unwelcome. She took two items out of the one three large coffers in her cabin. One turned out to be a letter, too thick and heavy to be carried by a raven, and the other a small scroll. She handed him the more consistent parchment first.

“This is a summary I have commissioned of the ledgers of the Six Kingdoms. The sorry state of the North is apparent from everything that surrounds us, I believe.” She then held out the scroll. “This has arrived from Dorne, from Princess Arianne of House Martell. Read this one first.”

Jon was more bewildered than ever before. Daenerys returned to her seat. She was so pale now the skin of her face seemed translucent. A frisson of anger spiked across their bond at his hesitation. The Daenerys Targaryen he had once known was still in there, somewhere, buried underneath the magic and all this dark iciness she was currently displaying. Her glare turned fierce and he was reminded of their first meeting on Dragonstone.

“You need to be more adept at hiding your thoughts, as long as our bond endures,” she commented caustically.

“I don’t want to hide my thoughts from you.”

“Read,” she commanded.

“Elia Martell was well loved by Dorne,” he started to read then lowered the letter. “What is that you want me to see? That my parents’ love was not without casualties?”

“There are many choice words I would have for you, Jon Snow, but silly is not among them. I realize you are fully aware of what my brother and your mother wrought. You might be blameless in all this but we still have to deal with the consequences, especially as we are fighting a second War for the Dawn.”

“You need to appease Dorne,” he reasoned. “We need them more than any other of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“And why is that?”

“Because they have experience successfully fighting off dragons.”

“Meraxes was killed by a lucky shot.”

“I don’t mean that and you must know it. I mean the war that followed. Lead by the Martells, the Dornish hid in their marshes and harassed any invading force, draining the life out of it. King Daeron I invaded with as many as 60 000 men and still the Dornish emerged victorious. Dragons never conquered Dorne. If you knew about the ice dragons beforehand, which I believe you did, gaining Dorne’s support would have been your first priority. Their knowledge could prove invaluable in the battles still to come in this war.”

Something trembled across their bond but it was snatched away before it could make its way to him.

“You should read further,” she advised mildly.

He didn’t. “What does Princess Arianne want?”

“Your name, not your head.”

He felt his jaw grow taut. “My name is Jon Snow.”

“You can have another name: _mine_!”

Her newly-found cryptic manner was beginning to grate. “Yours?!”

“I have a home in the East and I have love there. I can think of nothing I could desire more than to return to it, once we have won this war, but unfortunately, I cannot leave Westeros to its unruly devices. And there are only so many times I can come here to beat it into sanity. The only time the Seven Kingdoms had peace and unity was when it was imposed upon them through fire and blood. The War of the Five Kings and the Three-Eyed Raven’s own disastrous ruling proved that there cannot be a king from one of your houses. Lest the others rise up and try to take the throne for themselves. But you do not like foreigners, either. So what the Seven Kingdoms need is a king who is both foreign and from a local house.”

“No,” he thundered, slamming his tankard down on the table. “I don’t want it!”

She glowered at him. “How long did they have to hold you down before they made you Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch?” she shouted, the fury rising a faint blush to her cheeks, chasing some of her pallor away. She paused before continued in a somewhat calmer tone of voice. “Being a king is about more than power and feasting in grand halls. It means the greatest responsibility imaged and caring for your people, taking on their fears and weaknesses and never affording yourself the luxury of wants and wishes of your own. I am not asking you to rule the people of Westeros, I am asking you to save them. From the Others, from themselves, even as they hate you for it.” She thumped her index on the thicker letter. “Take this with you. Read it carefully. Numbers never lie, only men do, the Braavosi are fond of saying. As a queen, I have often tested that and found it to be true.”

Jon leaned back in his chair. “What are you proposing?”

“An alliance through marriage. You and I will marry and you shall become Jon Targaryen, a name acquired in a way that doesn’t risk offending the Dornish. When the war is over, you will be crowned King of the Seven Kingdoms and I will rule in the East. I will cover Westeros’ debt and provide gold for its reconstruction and food for its starving people. And our dragons will keep the great houses from taking arms against your rule.”

“You would marry me?” Of everything she had outlined with enough clarity and conviction to make him suspect that she had been mapping it in her head for a quite a while, that was what he found the most unbelievable.

“Bitter enemies have become allies through marriage before. It is how Dorne joined the Seven Kingdoms and swore allegiance to the dragons they had been fighting for nearly two centuries.”

For the first time since his death, Jon felt truly chilled. The bottom of his world was veering dangerously. It wasn’t that he didn’t grasp her meaning. He did. He was all too aware of the realities she was speaking of and had heard enough whispers of unfortunate wedding nights followed by marriages filled with rancor and misery. Growing up a bastard, this had been the only thing he had been grateful for: not being a high born meant that he would never have had to impose himself upon some resentful woman forced to marry him as a result of a political arrangement. He knew that if he agreed, their marriage could never exist solely on paper. It would have to be wholly legal and there would have to be heirs, if at all possible. He couldn’t imagine how much worse this was for her, given her own past, their shared one and their present situation. He sensed nothing coming across the bond from her and was grateful for it. His own horror was more than enough.

He opened his mouth to refuse. He could be persuaded to accept the throne but, though he saw her point and respected the sound principle of it, he could never agree to the grotesque farce attached to it.

“Do not give me an answer now.” Her voice was sharp, her lips ashen and her face stone. “Take a fortnight to think about it then come to me with your decision.”

Jon suddenly regretted eating, fearing his breakfast might make its way back up his throat, for it sat too awkwardly in his stomach. Deep within the darkest recesses of his soul, he knew what he would do even as he hated himself for it.

TBC

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am sorry to have kept you all waiting for so long but I have been through some stuff personally and have been unable to write.

**Author's Note:**

> If you've read, please leave a comment with your thoughts. Good or bad, I wanna hear it. Thank you!


End file.
